Michael McAndrew

Instructor of Collaborative Piano
Office: Music 221
Phone: 409-880-8076
Email: mmcandrew1@lamar.edu
Website: www.michaelnmcandrew.com

Education

  • Doctor of Musical Arts, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • Master of Music (Composition/Collaborative Piano), Binghamton University (SUNY)
  • Bachelor of Music (Composition), Moravian College (now Moravian University)

Michael N. McAndrew maintains an active schedule as a collaborative pianist and vocal coach, currently as coaching staff for Songe d’été en musique in Quebec, Canada and DuoMotive with flutist, Michelle Li. He has also played with Opera Saratoga, Lyric Theatre @ Illinois, Springfield Symphony Orchestra (OH), Central Illinois Youth Chorus, Summer Harmony Men's Chorus, Tri-Cities Opera, Binghamton Community Orchestra, Penn State Scranton Chorale, the Foothills Opera Experience, and All Score Urbana. He has worked with artists such as Phil Woods, Randy Brecker, Bob Dorough, the Momenta Quartet, Michelle DeYoung, Julian Ovenden, Jeffrey Biegel, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, Jeffrey Wahl, Julie and Nathan Gunn, Ricardo Herrera, Audrey Vallance, Marc Webster, Joshua Glasner, and Maryte Bizinkauskas. Michael was also founder and director/pianist of the Night of Stars concert series, which fundraised for several organizations in the Southern Tier area of New York.

As a composer, he has been hailed as "harmonically gorgeous", with a desire "to hear more from him". He has had pieces premiered by the DeMarina Trio, Plexus Collective, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, the Bel Canto Children's Chorus, and the Momenta Quartet in various venues such as the Crane School of Music, the Beleura House and Garden (Victoria, Australia), Zoellner Arts Center, ICA's Clarinet Fest, and at the renowned Christmas Vespers at Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, PA. He was selected as the winner of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem's 2nd Annual Young Composer Competition in 2012 and was finalist in the 2019 NATS Art Song Competition for his cycle of the element and in the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies Call for Scores for his orchestral work Sandcastles of Yesterday. The first act of his opera, [i am a city], based on a libretto by Bogdan Mynka, premiered in workshop format in March 2020. His song “Air Castles” from the cycle of the element… was recently published by North Star Music in their Soprano “Modern Music for New Singers” anthology. During the COVID pandemic, Michael co-founded “Art Song at Home”, a virtual series featuring hundreds of musicians from all over the world in works spanning numerous genres.

Michael received his DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying collaborative piano with Casey Robards and Michael Tilley, and composition with Carlos Carrillo. He was also a double recipient of the Nancy Kennedy Wustman Award in Vocal Accompanying in 2019 and 2021. While at UIUC, Michael was assistant conductor for The Rape of Lucretia, and music directed Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World at the Allerton Barn, which saw a repeat performance in January of 2020 after much acclaim. As music staff, he has also taken part in productions of La Bohéme, Crazy for You, Cunning Little Vixen, Cabaret, A Little Night Music, Vanessa, The Turn of the Screw, and The Last American Hammer. He was also Chorus Master for Sinfonia da Camera’s performance of H.M.S. Pinafore and head vocal coach for Springfield Symphony Orchestra’s Pirates of Penzance. His doctoral thesis "From Obscurity to New Relevancy: A More Accessible Approach to Samuel Barber's Vanessa", was a re-orchestration and performance of Vanessa for fourteen musicians, as well as deeper historical study into the work as a whole.

Michael holds additional degrees from Binghamton University (MM), where he studied composition with Daniel Thomas Davis and collaborative piano with Joel Harder, and Moravian College (BM), where studied composition with Larry Lipkis and Sean O’ Boyle, piano with Barbara Thompson, and collaborative piano with Graeme Burgan. He remains an active church musician and was music director at Faith United Methodist Church in Champaign, IL before coming to Lamar. While there, he also studied organ with Michael Fisher. Recent engagements include the re-orchestration of Verdi's La Traviata and Puccini’s La Boheme for the Bay View Music Festival in Petoskey, Michigan, DuoMotive participating in the Society of Composer’s Inc. call for scores as part of their 2022 National Conference, and as pianist for Deus Ex Musica in Champaign and Petoskey, as part of their In the Shadow of Your Wings series, featuring contemporary settings of the Psalms. To find out more about Michael, you can visit his website: https://www.michaelnmcandrew.com