Mary Louise Boehm

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Mary Louise Boehm was a pianist and painter who was born on July 25, 1928 in Sumner, Iowa and died on November 29, 2002 in Spain.

Mary Louise Boehm was a descendant of Joseph Böhm, a piano maker active in Vienna during the early 19th century. Born in Iowa, her early aptitude for the piano earned her the reputation of a child prodigy. She studied with Louis Crowder at Iowa State Teachers College and subsequently with Robert Casadesus and Walter Gieseking^[1].

Boehm's repertoire and recorded output was notable for works by American composers such as Amy Beach and Ernest Schelling who are far from mainstream, even now. She also performed and made perimere recordings of works by early romantic composers such as John Field, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Johann Peter Pixis, Ignaz Moscheles and Friedrich Kalkbrenner, helping to introduce a generation of music lovers to these neglected composers. She was also interested in performance on period instruments at a time when this was rare.

She began painting in the 1960s, working in oils, watercolor and inks. While on concert tours in South America she became interested in textiles, which led to her involvement with weaving, textile design and the complicated field of dye and color chemistries. Eventually she chose batik as a painterly textile medium. She studied the traditional Indonesian batik techniques and pioneered modern adaptations, and had major shows in the United States.^[2]

She married the Dutch violinist Kees Kooper with whom she performed regularly.