Mark McDowell: Musician, Composer, Choir Director

By Diane Findlay, Submitted August 2023

Mark McDowell grew up in Iowa. According to the brief biography on his website (link below), he started making music at age six and got his first guitar when he was thirteen. We have pictures of him playing piano or guitar and singing at Bahá’í gatherings dating back to the 1970s. Mark lived in Des Moines as a youth/young adult and was active with a group of youth that thrived under the nurturing of Ruth Moffet in the 1970s. Then he and his first wife Mary lived in Dubuque for a time in the 1980s and early 1990s. Later, he moved to the Cedar Rapids area where, with his wife Becky Jensen, he has been active sharing music in several ways. He directed the Cedar Rapids Bahá’í Choir, played guitar and sang at countless Bahá’í events and gatherings, and set the sacred Writings to music and recorded two CDs, “Make Firm Our Steps” (2003) and “The Ancient Beauty” (2007). Tracks from his CDs air on WLGI Radio Bahá’í. You can watch the performance of one of Mark’s compositions, “I Beg Thee to Forgive Me,” performed by the mass choir at the 2019 Australian Bahá’í Choral Festival on 8 September 2019 at the Bahá’í House of Worship in Sydney, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBwgdomdK2k. He collaborated with Becky Jensen and Jan King on a series of Arts Firesides, extended dramatic and musical performances titled “The Equality of Women and Men,” “A Healing Medicine,” “Oneness,” “Peace and Unity,” and “On the Wings of Prayer.” Mark has also played in a couple of bands that perform around Iowa, most recently a classic rock band called Diamond.

Mark has a website you can visit at https://markmcdowell.com/home.