Everett McCorvey

Director and Executive Producer, University of Kentucky Opera Theatre

Dr. Everett McCorvey (he/him) is a native of Montgomery, Alabama. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Alabama. He has also studied Italian, Centro Linguistico Sperimentale, in Florence, Italy, and French diction at the Juilliard School in New York City.

Joining the University of Kentucky faculty in 1991, Dr. McCorvey is a professor of voice. Since 1997 he has been the director and executive producer for University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

He has performed all over the world, in such venues as the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Opera, Radio City Music Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, England, as well as stages in Austria, Brazil, China, the Czech and Slovac Republics, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.

As a tenor soloist, Dr. McCorvey has worked with maestros Kirk Trevor and Julius Williams. His operatic roles include Don Jose in Carmen, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Fenton in Falstaff, and Puck in La Grande Duchess de Gerolstein, among others.

Dr. McCorvey is the founder and music director of the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group of 24 professional singers performing spirituals and other compositions of African-American composers. In March 2013, the American Spiritual Ensemble made successful debuts in Quito Ecuador at the XII Fextival de Musica Sacra, and in Fargo, North Dakota, at the Music of the America’s Symposium sponsored by North Dakota State University and the American Choral Directors Association. 

Born and reared in Montgomery, Alabama, McCorvey lived around the corner from Martin Luther King, Jr., and his father was a deacon at the church where Ralph Abernathy was a minister. In the third grade, young Everett started taking trumpet lessons. By high school he had switched to baritone horn. When he matriculated to the University of Alabama, he auditioned on the baritone horn for Bill Stevens, who was a voice teacher for Jim Nabors. It was Stevens who suggested McCorvey should consider singing as his musical instrument of choice. He did, and began studying with voice teacher Edward White.

Knowing he wanted to be a teacher himself, McCorvey felt he needed to perform first, before he could be effective in instructing others on how to perform. To the delight of students and audiences alike, Dr. Everett McCorvey has managed to sustain both performing and teaching, because each makes him better at the other

Dr. McCorvey is of the belief that every citizen in the country should find ways to give back to his or her community, city or country.  He has been very active in his volunteer activities working to keep the arts as a part of the civic conversation and currently serves on many local, regional and national boards. He holds an Endowed Chair in Opera Studies/Director of Opera and Professor of Voice at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. 

In September of 2010, Dr. McCorvey served as the Executive Producer of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Alltech 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games held in Lexington, Kentucky.  The Opening Ceremony was broadcasted on NBC Sports and was viewed by over 500 million people worldwide.  The Alltech 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games was the largest equestrian event to ever be held in the United States. 

With his wife, soprano Alicia Helm, Dr. McCorvey has given concerts, master classes and workshops throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. Everett and Alicia have three children.