Critical acclaim of Ryan’s performances, interviews & press features
MN: Where are you from originally? R McK: Los Angeles, CA MN: Are there other musicians in your family? RMcK: Both my parents studied classical guitar at the University of Southern California. MN: Where did you study? RMcK: First, I studied at Pasadena City College, then Cal State Northridge and after that at the Juilliard School. MN: What instruments do you...
“Singing is most powerful to me when it’s deeply connected to our whole lives,” says Ryan McKinny. These are telling words from a singer who has forged his career not as a series of stops on the opera circuit but as a process of exploration—and whose reputation stands as much on his thoughtful approach to his work as on the intrinsic appeal of his...
The glowing menace of the mushroom cloud mixed genius with death. John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic” shows the father of nuclear weapons in all his complexity; the charismatic leader, the cold calculation and the horror at what his work had wrought. The dramatic piece opens for the first time in the state of the bomb’s gestation and birth at the Santa Fe Opera on...
When Leonard Bernstein’s Mass had its world premiere in 1971, the world was, to put in bluntly, a mess. The war in Southeast Asia was still going strong, political assassinations had shocked the world, popular culture was shifting radically and civil rights were becoming more and more important. In other words, it was a time not unlike our own. Critics didn’t...
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Los Angeles-born and Juilliard-trained baritone Ryan McKinny has made Houston his home. A+C music writer Cortney Jacobs caught up with the rising singer and Houston Grand Opera Studio alum the day before he started rehearsals at HGO for Rigoletto, which runs Jan. 24-Feb. 9. McKinny continues his HGO roll with Das Rheingold April 11-26, followed...
