About Mary Jo

Mary Jo Maichack is a national award-winning singer, storyteller and creative teaching artist whose work has reached an estimated total audience of half a million people.

HIGHLIGHTS — Mary Jo Maichack, Minstrel Storyteller

 

• Winner, NAPPA Gold and NAPPA Honors for CDs of Storytelling & Music

• Winner, Julie Andrews Artist-in-Residence Award, Worcester MA Educational Foundation

• NEW! Massachusetts Humanities Council FAIR roster artist (Family Adventures in Reading)

• Winner, MCC STARS Program for Oral Literacy Residency, Ells School, Springfield, MA

• Nominee: MCC Gold Star Program Award for Multilingual Show “Everybody Says Hello”

• Creative Teaching Artist using traditional folktales and multi-performing arts approaches to literacy

• Dynamic Teller of Folktales, Tunes for All Ages

• Fearless Leader of Fun–Bringing audience to the stage to sing, dance, act, chant in variety shows

• Loves people, music, story, languages, poetry, personal empowerment, her artist husband, Gregory Maichack and one really fluffy cat.

She has performed on regional festival stages from San Francisco to a school in Venice, Italy, at schools, libraries and many venues and taught children and adults how to brave the stage and build oral language skills for their education and delight. She has won two national awards for her CDs of storytelling & music, including an original tale of historical fiction. Her workshops correspond with learning standards–by the number.

She has performed & trained others in more than 3,000 sites since 1989, from South Carolina, to Scuola Gozzi in after-school programs, countless preschools, YMCAs, family centers, libraries and schools from K-8; WGBY-TV (PBS) On-Air Literacy Fair; Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, MA; Safe Kids & TV Award-Winning Educational TV (PEG Award) in Providence, RI; First Night Northampton, (five years). She is a regular workshop provider at the Northeast Regional Storytelling Conference, (League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling) held annually at M.I.T. and elsewhere.

She has provided training and professional development for the City of Chicopee, Mass.; Holyoke Day Nursery, regional roundtable meetings of children’s librarians from Boston to southern Connecticut; Bright Horizons Corporate Day Care, Head Start, and Springfield City Library literacy STARR volunteers, to name a few. She served a year as children’s librarian at Mason Square, Springfield, MA.

She earned a B.A. cum laude in English literature from Middlebury College, attended their German Summer School, uses French, Italian, & Spanish, even bits of Japanese & Russian in her many programs. Foreign language learning is a favorite hobby.

She is a Cabaret Singer interpreting the Great American Songbook. Performances at Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, MA, Cranwell Resort, Lenox, MA and elsewhere.