Claire McCahan

Singing is a source of comfort and joy to me, as well as my gateway to free expression and connection. Growing up, my parents were always sharing songs with my sister and me, and it made us feel close to them. I am looking forward to helping others cultivate a personal voice to be able to share that same joy with their children and loved ones.

Mezzo-soprano Claire McCahan has been praised for her clear and warm tone as well as her captivating stage presence.  Her performance areas range from opera and musical theater to folk and jazz. Recent opera credits include Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Intermountain Opera Bozeman), Olga in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, the title role in Handel’s Ariodante, Third Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, Prince Orlofsky in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Eklund Opera), and a staged performance of Jake Heggie’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (Opera Steamboat). Equally interested in music of the Baroque era, she has performed the works of Handel, Vivaldi, and Bach regionally with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra, the Boulder Bach Festival, Colorado Bach Ensemble, Rocky Mountain Chorale, St. John’s Cathedral of Denver, and Boulder’s Cantabile Ensemble, and was the winner of the 2019 Frances MacEachron Award from the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio Solo Competition in New York. An advocate of new works, she sang the role of Brittomara in the 2018 workshop production of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s If I Were You (CU NOW) and has worked with CU student composers on art songs and multifaceted artistic collaborations through the Pendulum New Music Series. She is a recipient of the university’s 2019 NEST Fellowship, a collaboration of the arts and geologic science, as well as a 2017 Ogilvy Travel Fellowship, traveling to Scotland to research cultural expression through folk song. A winner of the College of Music’s Centennial Song Contest, her endeavors as a singer-songwriter have been influenced by her mother’s taste for artists such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Peter, Paul and Mary, Enya, and Van Morrison. She received her bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the University of New Hampshire and her master’s from the University of Colorado Boulder where she is currently an Artist Diploma candidate in Opera Performance