Juilliard-trained tenor and voice teacher Andy McCullough is a versatile artist-educator accomplished and equally at ease in the operatic, choral, sacred, art song, jazz, and popular music traditions. Locally, he is a proud member of the Minnesota Chorale professional core, the 32-voice VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul’s 8-voice Schola Cantorum and Cathedral Choir professional core. Andy maintains a private voice studio and leads workshops on ear training, diction, performance practice, and showmanship, working primarily with students at the secondary and post-secondary level. He specializes in preparing young singers for college/conservatory, graduate school, and young artist program auditions, and with over a decade as a startup founder and marketing executive, he brings expertise in both the artistic and the self-promotional required of today’s professional musicians. Andy teaches Theatre Arts at North Community High School, and works alongside the Saint Paul Academy Upper School Choir.
Andy has performed leading and supporting roles at Castleton Festival, Palacio de la Ópera de A Coruña (Spain), and Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman), all under the baton of the late Maestro Lorin Maazel, and with Juilliard Opera, the Juilliard Opera Center, Chautauqua Opera, and the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh Festival. He has performed as a soloist at Alice Tully Hall and made his professional debut at Carnegie Hall as a boy soprano in the role of Youth (Elijah) with Sherrill Milnes conducting. Roles include Male Chorus (The Rape of Lucretia), Peter Quint (The Turn of the Screw), Rinuccio (Gianni Schicchi), Sam (Susannah), Monostatos (Die Zauberflöte), Bardolfo (Falstaff), Basilio (Le nozze di Figaro), Harry (La Fanciulla del West), Monsieur Lacouf (Les mamelles de Tirésias), Die Soldat (Der Kaiser von Atlantis), Dr. Frank Gibbs (Our Town), Count Carl Magnus Malcolm (A Little Night Music), and Danjel (Kristina von Duvemåla).
Andy’s voice has found a special home in the music of Benjamin Britten and other 20th and 21st century composers. He is an alumnus of the Aspen Opera Center, where he made his Aspen Music Festival debut as Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia and “brought bright dignity and exceptionally clear singing to the role of Male Chorus” (Aspen Times)
Highlights of orchestral engagements as Tenor Soloist include Purcell’s Hail! Bright Cecilia with the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh Festival, Verdi’s Requiem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana at Alice Tully Hall, Britten’s Les illuminations with Lorin Maazel and the Castleton Festival Orchestra, with Washington Post saying “most of the credit goes to tenor Andy McCullough, whose light and airy voice, with power where he needed it, was beautiful to hear”.
Andy’s previous professional choral ensemble work includes long-term engagements with the Riverside Church (NYC), Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock (Long Island, NY), Church of the Blessed Sacrament (NYC), and the Pittsburgh Camerata.
He holds a master’s degree in vocal performance from The Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Marlena Malas. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Performance and Music Education at Ithaca College, where he studied with David Parks and began his work teaching high school choirs in Upstate New York.