Everett McCorvey

Everett David McCorvey, born December 3, 1957, in Montgomery, Alabama, is an American classical tenor, conductor, teacher, and producer whose career spans Broadway performance, operatic singing, academic leadership, and ensemble direction. He appeared on Broadway in 1983 in a revival of Porgy and Bess staged at Radio City Music Hall, a credit that reflects his early work as a performer in New York. He has since sung at major venues including the Metropolitan Opera, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Teatro Comunale in Florence, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and at houses in Mexico, China, and across Europe. He performs regularly as a soloist and alongside his wife, soprano Alicia Helm.

McCorvey grew up in Montgomery during the Civil Rights era. His father, David McCorvey, worked as a postal worker and served as a deacon at First Baptist Church, where Ralph Abernathy was the minister, and Martin Luther King Jr. lived in the same neighborhood. Neither parent was involved in the arts, but McCorvey has described how his interest in music began at age eight when he heard a trumpet being practiced by one of the college students his family housed. He graduated from Jefferson Davis High School in Montgomery in 1975 and went on to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he earned a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance in 1979, a Master of Music with an emphasis on vocal performance and choral conducting in 1981, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance in 1989. His doctoral dissertation focused on the art songs of Black American composers. In 2015, he received the Alabama Distinguished Artist Award, which recognizes professional artists who have earned significant national acclaim over an extended period.

Before joining the University of Kentucky, McCorvey held teaching positions at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa from 1980 to 1983, at Newtown High School in Queens, New York from 1985 to 1986, and at Knoxville College from 1989 to 1991. He joined the University of Kentucky faculty in 1991 as an assistant professor of voice, was promoted to full professor in 1997, and that same year became director and executive producer of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre. Since 2006 he has held the Lexington Opera Society Endowed Chair in Opera Studies. He has also served on faculty at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and the Bay View Music Festival in Bay View, Michigan. Among his students, Gregory Turay won the National Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1995 and Reginald Smith Jr. won the same competition in 2015. Former students also include Broadway performers and screen actors Reshma Shetty, Phumzile Sojola, Andrea Jones Sojola, and Jennifer Fair.

As director of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, McCorvey has produced more than 40 operas, including world premieres of River of Time, Our Lincoln, Hotel Casablanca, God Bless Us Everyone, and Bounce – The Basketball Opera, the latter four by composer Thomas Pasatieri. Under his leadership, the company also mounted the first university productions of The Little Prince by Rachel Portman, A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn, and Silent Night by Kevin Puts. Since 1992 he has annually produced, served as musical director for, and performed in a Broadway review concert called "It's a Grand Night for Singing," which features popular and classical numbers performed by students, faculty, and community members.

McCorvey founded the American Spiritual Ensemble in 1995, a group of approximately two dozen classically trained professional singers dedicated to performing American spirituals and compositions by African American composers. The ensemble has given more than 400 concerts, including 18 tours of the United States and 16 tours of Spain, and has released several recordings. The group has been featured in two PBS broadcasts, The Spirituals and a special concert program. McCorvey has described the founding of the ensemble as a response to his concern that the tradition of the American Negro Spiritual was being lost.

In the area of conducting, McCorvey studied under Frederick Prentice at the University of Alabama and has worked extensively with Robert Baldwin and John Nardolillo at the University of Kentucky. Guest conducting engagements have included the Mythos Opera Festival in Taormina, Sicily, and the North Czech Philharmonic in Prague. Since 2014 he has served as artistic director and principal conductor of the National Chorale of New York City, a symphonic choir that performs major choral works at Lincoln Center. In September 2021 he conducted the National Chorale alongside the Field Band and Soldiers' Chorus at Liberty State Park in New Jersey for a concert marking the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In December 2021 he conducted the world premiere of Stella Sung's operatic adaptation of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Secret River, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, at Opera Orlando. In 2019 he joined the board of directors of the International Conductors Guild, which represents more than 1,100 symphony, band, and choral conductors worldwide.

Beyond his university and ensemble work, McCorvey is the founder and president of Global Creative Connections, a production company focused on live public and private events. He is based in Lexington, Kentucky.