Joshua McGuire

JOSHUA McGUIRE has written librettos for The Secret of Luca, (based on the novel by Ignazio Silone) and Roscoe (based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy) with music by Evan Mack. In October 2016, Roscoe received a full performance by the Albany Symphony featuring soprano Deborah Voigt in the lead role of Veronica. His collaboration with Mack also produced #isoperadead, the first-ever opera for Twitter, as well as Lucinda y Las Flores de la Nochebuena, a children's opera commissioned by the Fresno State Opera Theatre. Since premiering in 2016, the opera has played for over 15,000 children, including annual performances by Opera in the Heights (Houston) and the San Francisco Opera Guild. Mack & McGuire’s one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby, based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, was commissioned and premiered by Samford University in 2018. They are currently fulfilling a multi-company commission for a new comedy entitled Yeltsin in Texas!

In 2015, McGuire was commissioned to write a libretto for Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, and the resulting one-act opera, Alexandra, with music by David Clay Mettens, was premiered at the Kennedy Center. He is also the author of The Secret of Music: a look at the listening life, a book of essays on music and mindfulness. McGuire is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, and from the Susan Shames Feinstein Librettist Fellowship at the American Center for New Works Development.

McGuire is represented by Sam Fleishman of Literary Artists Representatives, and his debut novel, By Water and Blood, is currently in development. The story of a father’s love, identity repressed, and a single missed phone call, By Water and Blood is a book about the terrifying presence of the past.

McGuire currently teaches at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. He studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he pursued Master’s work in both guitar and orchestral conducting, holding assistantships in both areas. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he took the Bachelor of Music summa cum laude as well as High Honors in English Literature for his thesis on musical structures in the work of James Joyce. He currently resides in Nashville with his wife, pianist and conductor Jennifer McGuire, their son Thomas, and a basset hound.