Scholar-performer Marya Fancey uses her research to bridge temporal and cultural gaps in music for students and audiences. She received a 2017–2018 Fulbright Student Research Award to Poland for Historical Music Performance. This grant supported her dissertation research on organ masses from the Tablature of Johannes of Lublin (ca. 1540), culminating in a performance of its three mass cycles with vocal ensemble Flores Rosarum at the fifteenth-century Church of the Holy Cross in Krakow. She has presented at meetings of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America and the SE chapter of the American Musicological Society.
Her concert programs frequently incorporate works by underappreciated composers. In 2016 Marya Fancey introduced Polish audiences to the music of Florence Price and David Hurd at the Podlaskie Organ Festival and the 18th International Festival of Organ Music at Pelplin Cathedral. She gave the 2015 world premiere of Passacaglia and Triple Fugue (organ) by Louise Talma. In 2011 she performed Sonata No. 2 (piano) by Grażyna Bacewicz at the 15th Annual Festival of Women Composers (Gainesville, FL).
In studio and classroom teaching she augments the traditional classical canon with lesser-known compositions as well as works from a variety of other musical styles. She has taught music studies courses at UNCG, Guilford College, and the University of Florida. Her past professional activities include apprentice organ builder, church organist and choir director, private music teacher, and assistant music editor.
Marya Fancey holds the DMA degree in Organ Performance from UNC-Greensboro, where she studied with André Lash (organ) and Andrew Willis (harpsichord and fortepiano), with a Post-Master’s certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy and a Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Historical Keyboard Performance. Her interest in the scholar-performer model arose from masterclasses with Marie-Claire Alain, Olivier Latry, John Grew, William Porter, Hank Knox, and Edoardo Bellotti at multiple McGill Summer Organ Academies between 2005 and 2015.