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About Mark

Mark E. Ellis began studying the piano at the age of 6 and began performing professionally at age 12. Throughout his teen years, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, he played and sang in rock bands and began forming the basis for what would become his own musical style. He also began writing songs, leaning more toward such songwriters as James Taylor and Carole King than the hard rock bands of that era. In later years, Mark performed in other bands as well as solo at lounges, and at weddings, in schools and in churches.

Mark's faith began forming while attending Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Mass. At this private high school founded by evangelist Dwight L. Moody in the late 1800s, religious studies were required for all students, as was attendance at chapel several times a week. During his four years in high school, Mark studied both the Old and New Testaments as well as other religions. While attending Amherst College in Amherst, MA, he continued his study of the Bible. More recently he has taken courses in Christian education from Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio, and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J., and received a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Excelsior College in Albany, N.Y.  His master's thesis was a paper about the experiences of deaf people in the Christian Church and the need for an expanded Deaf Ministry effort, and a CD of 10 songs written from the poetry of a deaf Christian woman from Texas.

After 15 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, Mark returned to songwriting and performing in 1995. Since then, he has written hundreds of songs and has released three CDs of contemporary Christian music and a CD of children's songs and a Southern Gospel CD as a member of the Praise Brothers, a singing duo with Jon Evans of Brattleboro, VT. Find more info about it here!

Mark and his wife Sonya formed the Lighthouse Song & Sign Ministry in 1996 and they have ministered and performed Mark's original devotional music in church services, coffeehouses and concert halls all over the East Coast and in Nova Scotia and Barbados. Sonya translates the songs into American sign language for the Deaf and hearing impaired.

Mark and Sonya also perform at libraries and schools, where they help children to understand and accept the deaf and hearing impaired. Their children's programs include storytelling and signing to music, as well as some basic instruction in sign language.