Fun Things About Mary
1) Mary Nell
Lemanski was born January 18, 1975 at 3:43 AM at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, IL. She was born one month
premature, weighed 3 lbs., 11.5 oz., was 16.5 inches long, and had a head the size of a small orange.
2) In grade school and junior high, Mary was a tom boy and was active
in school basketball and volleyball and summer baseball/softball leagues. After tryouts one year for Little League Baseball,
Mary was first round draft pick...and she was one of only two girls that played baseball...unfortunately, performing the best
at tryouts landed her on the worst team...Mary still likes to work out, dance, and play sports.
2) Mary still holds the record at her high school, Sacred Heart-Griffin
High School (Springfield, IL), for the most awards in music, and she graduated from there in 1993.
3) In high school, Mary played a Gossiper in her school's production of Where's
Charley? (1991) and performed the part of Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof (1993). Note: Anyone with
videos of these performances please email Mary at marylemanski@popstar.com.
4) While at Millikin University, Mary wrote music
for two plays put on by the theatre department: Persephone's Piece and City Scream. City
Scream was also performed by Millikin students at the University of Illinois in Springfield for a spoken word/theatre
festival. One of Mary's songs from City Screem was sung by actress, Hedy Burress, a Millikin alum who has since gone on to star on the hit TV show, Boston
Common, and in movies, such as If These Walls Could Talk, Valentine, and Bug.
5) While in college, Mary took piano lessons from Aldo Mancinelli (and
his wife and former student, Judith Mancinelli), who took lessons from Claudio Arrau, who took lessons from Martin Krause,
who took lessons from Franz Liszt, who took lessons from Carl Czerny, who took lessons from Ludwig van Beethoven, who took
lessons from Joseph Haydn. Haydn was friends with and had a huge influence on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ludwig van Beethoven
also studied with Christian Neefe, who studied with Johann Hiller, who studied with Gottfried Homilius, who studied with Johann
Sebastian Bach. Mary's piano teacher, Aldo Mancinelli, was the first American to win the coveted Ferruccio Busoni
International Piano Competition. A Steinway Artist, Mancinelli has performed over 950 concerts throughout Europe, North
Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. He has played at Carnegie Hall in New York and has been the guest soloist
with major symphony orchestras including the Hague Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra,
the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony.
6) Mary
was the first music composition student from Millikin University to give a full one hour senior recital of her compositions.
7) Mary's
mother's family has a long history of involvement in Springfield, IL politics. (Contrary to popular belief, Springfield
is the capital of Illinois, not Chicago.) She has family members who are politicians that are Democrats and Republicans.
Their political involvement has ranged from chairs in the Republican Party to Finance Commissioner to City Treasurer to Mayor.
8) Mary's father's uncle, Frank "Lefty" Lamanske, was a left-handed pitcher for the 1935 Brooklyn Dodgers. Frank Lamanske
changed the spelling of his name to "Lamanske" from "Lemanski" because the media always misspelled it
"Lamanske." Note: Members of the press, please take notice of proper spelling.
9) Mary is not the only person in her family with musical and acting
talent. One of Mary's cousins, Joseph Langfelder, appeared as a senator in the movie, "Legally Blonde 2."
Another cousin, Jacob Langfelder, is an accomplished actor, singer, and songwriter...and yet another cousin,
Jonathan Cour, is also an aspiring singer/songwriter/musician.
10) MARY
LEMANSKI HAS BEEN ON MTV!!! Yes, it's true. It was not her own music video, but Mary appears in the Christina
Aguilera and Justin Timberlake "Behind the Tour: Justified and Stripped." You can see the camera focus in
on Mary for about 3-4 seconds as she is pushing a P.A. cabinet.
