Music found me via the theme from Jeopardy. Jeopardy was a nightly event in my home, and one night, at age four, I picked out the theme by ear. My parents immediately put me in piano lessons, and I fell in love with the piano and music, especially music involving singers. I started playing for choirs at age ten, which led to art song and opera, which led to coaching singers, and finally, conducting opera. I most recently conducted a sold-out production of Le Nozze di Figaro at Vanderbilt University’s Rothschild Theatre.
About Jennifer
Jennifer 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,” McGuire 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 OZ Arts, the Tenri Cultural Institute, L’Èglise de St.-Merry and the Vocal Artistry Art Song Festival, among others. She is featured on the albums Irrational Exuberance (Beauport Classical) and Sursum (Navona Records), as well the upcoming Heinrich Marschner : Songs for Baritone with baritone Jeffrey Williams (Centaur Records). She is a core member of the Atlantic Ensemble, a chamber group annually featured on the Accueil Musical de St.-Merry concert series in Paris, France and the Leela Trio. In addition to teaching at Vanderbilt, McGuire has worked for Cincinnati Opera, Dayton Opera, Opera Birmingham and the Nashville Symphony Chorus, and is a regular official pianist for the Laffont Competition (formerly Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions) in Tennessee.
McGuire has enjoyed many faculty appointments at summer programs, including the AIMS Festival (Graz, Austria), The Seagle Festival, the Boston Conservatory Opera Intensive (Valencia, Spain), Poco a Poco, the Accademia Vocale Lorenzo Malfatti (Lucca, Italy, and the Schmidt Vocal Institute (upcoming, 2025). In 2014, she co-founded a summer mentoring program for young professional vocal coaches with collaborative pianist Roger Vignoles. This program recently concluded its fourth iteration in May 2023 at Vanderbilt University.
McGuire made her conducting debut with Vanderbilt Opera Theatre’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in 2017. She has since conducted more than 16 productions at Vanderbilt, from Handel’s Semele to Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. She has also conducted Cosi fan Tutte at Opera Memphis, Le Nozze di Figaro at the Seagle Festival, Don Pasquale at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Halcyon with Vital Opera (virtual workshop).
In addition to her work in music, McGuire is a certified yoga instructor at the 200 and 300 hour levels, teaching two yoga classes open to all Vanderbilt students every semester. 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.
McGuire completed two master's degrees (piano performance and collaborative piano) at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Eugene Pridonoff, Kenneth Griffiths, Donna Loewy and Sylvia Plyler. She completed a bachelor's of music in piano performance at Shorter College with Helen Ramsaur. McGuire lives in Nashville with her husband, librettist Joshua McGuire, and son.