Bio
Mary Grace Ellerbee is currently Music Director of the Pretty Woman: The Musical 2nd National Tour. In 2024, Mary Grace also music directed the Pretty Woman company for its 5-week engagement in Japan. Previous: Keyboard 2 on the North American tour of CATS by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other local credits include the Southern Regional Premiere of Waitress (Music Director/Keys 1), Ragtime, 9 to 5, The Drowsy Chaperone, Sister Act, Cinderella, and Anything Goes, including Theatre Baton Rouge's 2018 production of Little Shop of Horrors (Keyboard 1) that won the 2020 Broadway World New Orleans Production of the Decade Award. She has performed at notable venues throughout North America and Japan including Showcenter Complex (Monterrey, Mexico), Queen Elizabeth Theatre (Vancouver, BC), Playhouse Square (Cleveland, OH), James M. Nederlander Theatre (Chicago, IL), Arsht Center (Miami, FL) and New National Theatre (Tokyo, Japan). As a coach and audition pianist, Mary Grace has given masterclasses at universities and coached actors at the professional, collegiate, secondary school, and community level. Mary Grace is a proud member of Maestra Music, an organization dedicated to providing support, visibility, and community to female and non-binary musicans in the theatre industry. In 2022, she was selected for the Maestra Mentorship Program, where she worked with Cynthia Kortman Westphal (Broadway Vocal Coach, Lion King, Come From Away). Equally comfortable on the concert hall stage, Mary Grace has concertized as a collaborative pianist throughout the United States while touring with Broadway shows. In the 2023-2024 season alone, she supported tubist Dr. Evan Zegiel in recital at University of California - Los Angeles, Ithaca College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Georgia.
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A Louisiana native and Cajun, Mary Grace's earliest musical experiences included listening to her father play the Blues and performing with school and church choirs. She credits growing up and participating in Louisiana's diverse music scene for developing her ability to perform in a multitude of styles including classical, rock/pop, and jazz. Mary Grace earned her Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Louisiana State University, under the tutelage of Gregory Sioles, Willis Delony, and Ana María Otamendi (collaborative piano). During her undergraduate studies, she had the opportunity to study abroad in Vienna, Austria where she studied collaborative piano with Carolyn Hague (MUK Wien); solo piano with Albert Sassmann (MDW Wien); chamber music; and Lied song. While in Austria, Mary Grace performed in recital as both a soloist and collaborative partner at the Palais Corbelli-Schöller. In Michigan, she has been in-demand as a wind ensemble and choral pianist, vocal coach, and recital partner. She has worked with organizations such as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Civic Youth Ensemble) and the Ann Arbor Youth Chorale. In 2022, Mary Grace was the Collaborative Piano Fellow for the Cornish-American Song Institute, where she coached singers and performed duo and chamber music in Oxford and Falmouth, UK. She has performed in masterclass for artists such as Sholto Kynoch (Oxford Lieder Festival), Teressa Cahill, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians. Previous engagements include performing on Interlochen Public Radio (NPR) and a recital at New World Symphony Truist Pavilion (Miami Beach, FL) with 2019 tuba fellow Evan Zegiel.
Mary Grace is a strong supporter of new music and has performed and recorded several world premieres of music for both solo piano and chamber settings. She is a member of Barefoot Duo, a chamber ensemble focused on performing works by living composers for tuba and piano. Mary Grace's passion for new music often intertwines with her passion for advocacy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Grace planned and performed several benefit concerts to raise money for national and local organizations. Her livestreamed living room concert "Dinner Theatre: A Quarantine Cabaret" supported substance abuse and mental health organization To Write Love On Her Arms and IRIS, a domestic violence center in Baton Rouge, LA. In 2021, Mary Grace raised $1,400 for the Cajun Navy's Hurricane Laura relief efforts in Lake Charles, LA with her Zoom concert "To Lake Charles, With Love," a series of solo and remote collaborative recordings from musicians across the United States and the United Kingdom. Her latest passion project is Gumbo de Musique: The Cajun French Art Song Project, an award-winning initiative contributing to the broader revitalization movement of the Cajun French language. Gumbo de Musique was the inaugural recipient of the 2023 Edward G. Powers Fund for Creativity Award from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, as well as a 2022 winner of the Running Start New Venture Competition at Michigan State University. In December 2023, she was featured on WRKF/WWNO's Louisiana Considered and presented a lecture recital on the project at Louisiana State University. This is an on-going project with more events to come. To learn more about this endeavor, please head to the launch page on this website.​