Maren Ord Burnham is a Canadian pop and rock singer and songwriter. She has released a number of Pop/Alternative albums (which can be found on iTunes under Maren Ord) through EMI/Capitol Records, Nettwerk Records, and Sony. Her stupendous career has garnered such accomplishments as songwriting with Randy Bachman (The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive) and Jim Vallance (Bryan Adams, Aerosmith), a Juno Award nomination (a Canadian Grammy) for writing Best New Song, winner of a Canadian Radio Music Award for Best Song, 4 videos and song placements in movies like “Crazy/Beautiful” and TV shows like “Alias”, “Related”, and “Joan of Arcadia.” Her genre is Pop/Folk and she records under the Sony/ATV Publishing label.

Maren Ord was born on 28 February 1981, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is the eighth of ten children in a Latter-day Saint family. Music has always played a major role in her life. Her father is a Julliard-trained opera director, and was a professor of music. Her mother taught piano and voice lessons. And the family toured and performed as the Ord Family Singers. Maren learned to sing and play piano from her mother, and by the age of 15, she had taught herself how to play the guitar.

In 1998 she met Canadian music manager Terry McBride of the Vancouver-based record label and management company Nettwerk at an audition for “Lilith Fair.” She was later showcased at the music festival, and McBride became her manager.

In 1999, after being told by her sister about a talent contest that was sponsored by Edmonton contemporary hit radio station Power 92, she entered four songs that she had written, and two of her songs – “Eternity” and “Falling Slowly” – were recorded for the station’s compilation CD, Power Picks Volume II.

Once signed with Nettwerk, and with McBride as her manager, Maren continued to perform and record, and her songs were used on several episodes of the American television series Felicity. She also performed the theme song for the 2000 movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad. At eighteen years old, she was signed to a major label, a multi-album international deal with EMI/Capitol. She performed her single “Perfect” on the TV series Joan of Arcadia, and in the movies Crazy/Beautiful and Extreme Dating. She also performed in two LDS movies: singing on the soundtrack of the 2002 romantic comedy The Singles Ward, and acting, as Sariah Phelps, in the 2003 family comedy The R.M. (or The Returned Missionary). She won awards and nominations, produced albums – Waiting, Pretty Things, My True Love Gave to Me, Not Today – and toured extensively for more than five years.

Her debut album, Waiting, was recorded in London, England and New York City and produced by Stephen Hague. On 7 November 2000, Highway Records released a special edition of Waiting to a predominantly Mormon bookstore market. The special edition featured a bonus track that was not available on the original release. Nettwerk released the album in Canada on 20 February 2001. Not being a major record label outside of Canada, Nettwerk quietly released Waiting in the United States on 27 August 2002.

Maren eventually left McBride and Nettwerk to join Gary McDonald at the Frontside Managment firm. She looked for another mass-market record company, but continued to work with Highway and its focus on the Mormon market for the 28 September 2004 release of her sophomore album, Not Today. The album was recorded at Randy Bachman’s (The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive), also a Latter-day Saint, studio on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. Randy collaborated on the album as co-writer, guitarist, and producer.

Her third album Pretty Things was released on 21 November 2006. With the release of the album, Maren entered an acoustic phase of her career. She wrote, recorded, and co-produced the entire album herself at a studio in Orem, Utah. The album was released digitally through iTunes on 10 October 2006, and was received with rave reviews from her fan base. Speaking of the album Pretty Things, Maren commented, “I wanted to try out a few ideas that I’d been developing for a while, and kind of explore a new direction. I’m really proud of this album because it’s the first time I’ve really been in the driver’s seat for the whole experience. The label, my manager, everyone just left me alone and let me do my thing.”

Maren is married, and she and her husband, Joe, are the proud parents of four children. She now chooses to devote her time to being a wife and a stay at home mom, all the while continuing to pursue her passion for writing and making music.

She recalls, “When I was 14 or 15, I saw my first musical, something called Saturday’s Warrior, and it got me thinking ‘Hey, I could do this!’ She considered her first attempt awful, but made the decision to not give up, and in one year she appeared in four musicals, Annie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Forever Plaid (as the musical director). In April 2015, her two-act musical Cursed by a Woman premiered. She wrote the music, book, lyrics, and the theme song “Have You Ever Had a Dream?”

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