She is a singer-songwriter and actress born Mary Faldermeyer in Rockland County, New York where she was raised in Stony Point. She put together her own studio in the bathroom at home when she was young and after graduating from high school studied medieval literature at McGill University. She then went to the Netherlands for a year and a half with her sister where she sang in cafes and listened to a lot of the vinyl records she found in the library there.
After returning to New York City she met the singer-songwriter Julie Flanders who introduced her to her boyfriend, the composer Emil Adler, who she also collaborated with. They were joined by the guitarist Dave Sabatino and put together the October Project. Mary Fahl was the lead singer and then the singer Marina Belica was added a while later.
The group performed their original music at coffee houses and similar establishments before signing up with Epic Records and released their debut album, which was self-titled, in 1993. Two years later their next release was Falling Farther In. They then went on tour but split up in 1996 and she pursued her own solo career when her vocal talents first lent themselves to commercial work and were used by several advertisers.
She concentrated on writing and co-writing her own material which she used in her 2000 EP release Lenses of Contact, which gained positive reviews. Two years later she won a contract with the Sony Odyssey label and released her album The Other Side of Time which reached No. 22 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. The album produced the songs “Going Home”, which was included in the film Gods and Generals and “The Dawning of the Day” which was used in the film version of the play The Guys.
By 2006 she had finished recording her next album, From the Dark Side of the Moon, which was her re-imagination of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. Due to the fact that the company V2 Records had gone out of business it wasn’t released until she released it herself in 2011.
In 2014 her next album was Love & Gravity and that same year she released her Mary Fahl Live At The Mauch Chunk Opera House which was a live double album she’d recorded in 2013 and won an Indie Acoustic Award for Best Live Album. The next year, in 2015, she sang at the premiere performances of the symphonic overture O For a Muse of Fore by the composer Darryl Kubian that has been commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Four years later she released the album Winter Songs & Carols in 2019, which won a 2020 Independent Music Award and in 2022 she released Can’t Get It Out Of My Head which is a collection of cover songs.
As an actor she had a role in the comedy production, based on Woody Allen short stories. Murder Mystery Blues.
Sources:
- https://maryfahl.com/about-2/
- https://www.passim.org/artists/mary-fahl/
- https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mary-fahl-mn0000859795#biography
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Fahl
- https://www.jamminjava.com/shows/mary-fahl-former-lead-singer-of-october-project/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Project
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side_of_Time
- https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/mary_fahl
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/512751-Mary-Fahl