Jennifer McGuire

Festival Conductor

Jennifer Quammen McGuire is a pianist, coach and conductor based in Nashville. Hailed by the Journal of Singing as “a most able collaborator, dispatching every pianistic challenge with complete aplomb,” she is Music Director of the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre and Principal Senior Lecturer in Collaborative Piano at the Blair School of Music. McGuire maintains an active recital schedule in Nashville and across the country, with recent engagements at Symphony Space, the University of Memphis, and the Eastman School of Music, among others. She is featured on the albums Irrational Exuberance (Beauport Classical) and Sursum (Navona Records), as
well as the recently released Heinrich Marschner: Songs for Baritone with baritone Jeffrey Williams (Centaur Records). She is a member of The Atlantic Ensemble and The Leela Trio. McGuire has also worked with Cincinnati Opera, Dayton Opera, Opera Birmingham, The Nashville Symphony Chorus, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Faculty appointments at summer programs include the AIMS Festival (Graz, Austria), Seagle Festival, the Boston Conservatory Opera Intensive (Valencia, Spain), Poco a Poco, and the Accademia Vocale Lorenzo Malfatti (Lucca, Italy).

McGuire has conducted The Marriage of Figaro, Candide, The Ghosts of Gatsby, Mansfield Park, Albert Herring, Cosi Fan Tutte, Semele, Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, Cendrillon, and Amahl and the Night Visitors for the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre. Guest conducting engagements include Le Nozze di Figaro at the Seagle Festival, Don Pasquale at Boston Conservatory, and Cosi fan Tutte at Opera Memphis, as well as a virtual workshop of the new opera Halcyon with Vital Opera. In 2020, McGuire forayed into virtual opera as music director and sound designer of Vanderbilt’s animated version of L’enfant et les sortilèges, which is available on YouTube. Upcoming productions include a workshop of the new opera Staggerwing, and Here be Sirens.

In addition to her work in music, McGuire is a certified yoga instructor at the 200 and 300 hour levels. She continues to study the physical and mental benefits of yoga with the goal of helping all people, but particularly artists, embrace their authentic selves and reach their full potential.