Andrew Megill
- Email Address: megill@rider.edu
- Phone: (609) 921-7100, ext. 8280
- Office: Williamson Hall
- Mailing Address: 101 Walnut Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540
Andrew Megill is recognized as one of the leading choral conductors of his generation, known for his passionate artistry and unusually wide-ranging repertoire, extending from early music to newly-composed works.
As Associate Professor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Dr. Megill conducts the Westminster Kantorei, a chamber choir specializing in music of the Renaissance and Baroque that was founded last year. Highlights of the coming season include a series of concerts in Princeton and New York City, including performances of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, and Song of Songs cycles by Palestrina and Daniel-Lesur. He has been conductor of both the Westminster Singers and the Westminster Chapel Choir, and was Associate Conductor of the Westminster Symphonic Choir for eleven years. In this capacity, he assisted in the preparing dozens of performances and recordings of choral-orchestral works with the world's leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and Philadelphia Orchestra, under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, Loren Maazel, Zdenek Macal, Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Robert Shaw.
Dr. Megill has prepared choruses for many of the world's leading orchestras and conductors. He has collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies (Beethoven and Glass); the American Symphony under Leon Botstein (works by Shostakovich and Prokofiev; the American premiere of Weill's Eternal Road, parts III and IV; Rachmaninov's The Bells and the American premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara's On The Last Frontier; a concert of works by Frederich Nietzsche and Frederic Delius; and a concert of twelve-tone music by Eisler and Henze); the Cleveland Orchestra under Pierre Boulez (Wagner's Parsifal); the Dresden Philharmonic under Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos (Brahms' Requiem); the National Symphony under Zdenek Macal (Verdi Requiem); the New Jersey Symphony under Neemi Jaarvi (Brahms' Requiem); the New York Philharmonic under Charles Dutoit (Berlioz La Damnation de Faust) and Alan Gilbert (Handel's Messiah); the Spoleto Festival Orchestra under Joseph Flummerfelt and Emmanuel Villaume; and the Mark Morris Dance Company under Jane Glover (Handel's L'Allegro) and Craig Smith (Virgil Thompson's Four Saints in Three Acts).
Since 1989, Dr. Megill has served as Artistic Director of Fuma Sacra, Ensemble-in-residence at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, recognized as "one of America's leading professional ensembles specializing in Renaissance and Baroque vocal music" whose performances leave the audience "gasping in amazement" (Classical New Jersey). He has led Fuma Sacra in the American premiere of many forgotten masterworks of the choral repertory, including Antonio Caldara's Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo, Francisco Guerrero's Missa puer natus est nobis, Messe Solenelle of Heinrich Isaac, cantatas by Johann Pachelbel, Georg Philipp Telemannan, and the Missa Dei Filii of Jan Dismas Zelenka. Dr. Megill's frequent performances of the music of J. S. Bach have been particularly admired; he has conducted all the major Bach choral works and over fifty of the cantatas with Fuma Sacra and the Westminster and Dublin Bach Festivals. Fuma Sacra has collaborated with many of the regions finest period instrument ensembles, including Piffaro, Tempesta di Mare, and Brandywine Baroque.
Dr. Megill is also Music Director of the Masterwork Chorus, one of metropolitan New York's finest volunteer choirs. With Masterwork, Dr. Megill has conducted the major choral-orchestral repertoire in the regions finest halls, including Avery Fisher and Carnegie halls.
For the past eleven years, Mr. Megill has served as chorusmaster for the operas of the Spoleto Festival USA, where his work has been praised for producing "the finest opera chorus in the world" (Charleston Post and Courier). In this capacity he has prepared the Westminster Choir for operas by Beethoven, Bellini, Berg, Walter Braunfels (the American premiere of Die Vogel), Handel, Henze, Janacek, Mozart, Puccini, Purcell, Strauss (Der Rosenkavalier, with soprano Renata Scotto), Verdi, and Kurt Weill (the American premiere and first recording of Die Burgschaft) conducted by Yves Abel, Spiros Argiris, Richard Bradshaw, Joseph Flummerfelt, Grant Llewellyn, Julius Rudel, Stephen Sloane, and Emmanuel Villaume. In his work for the Spoleto Festival, he has collaborated with many leading stage directors, including Christopher Alden, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, Giulio Chazalettes, Paul Curran, Jonathan Eaton, Gunter Kramer, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Keith Warner, Chen Shi-Zheng, and has conducted the Spoleto Festival Orchestra as part of the 2002 Festival in a concert of works by Tippett, Ives, and Britten. Dr. Megill has also prepared opera choruses for the Berkshire Opera, conducted by Joel Revzen and the Juilliard Opera Center, conducted by Julius Rudel.
Dr. Megill's passion for the choral art extends to works by living composers. He has conducted world and regional premieres of works by Richard Rodney Bennett, Andrew Bleckner, Paul Chihara, Peter Maxwell Davies, Jon Magnussen, Arvo Part, Stephen Paulus, Lewis Spratlan, Stephen Stuckey, and Augusta Read Thomas.
Dr. Megill has also had the pleasure of collaborating with folk singer Judy Collins and film director Ridley Scott. He holds degrees from the University of New Mexico (BM, Theory and Composition), Westminster Choir College (MM, Choral Conducting), and Rutgers University (DMA, Choral Conducting), all with highest honors.
