Biography

Macey Rowland is a Chicago-based soprano, teaching artist, and music educator passionate about making opera and classical music accessible, exciting, and meaningful for young people. She is returning for her second year as a Teaching Artist with Chicago Opera Theater’s Opera for All program, where she works with elementary students to explore storytelling, music, movement, and the collaborative process of creating and performing opera. She has also taught voice, piano, and classical music to students ranging from early childhood through high school, including through Indiana University’s Jacobs Virtual Academy and as a Pre-K Music Director and Music Leadership teacher.

As a performer, Macey has appeared in roles including Alcina in Handel’s Alcina, Hanna Glawari in Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and a Typist in the world premiere of Mason Bates’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Her concert work includes performances as a soprano soloist in Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Beethoven’s Mass in C, and a premiere song cycle by Eric Ewazen. She has also performed extensively in opera choruses, including with Indiana University Opera Theater and Opera Birmingham.

A committed interpreter of new music, Rowland earned third place in the 2025 Sparks & Wiry Cries Indiana SongSlam Composition competition for a collaborative work for voice and piano, for which she composed both the vocal line and original text in Elvish, inspired by her love of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including first prize in the 2024 Indiana National Society of Arts and Letters competition in classical voice, a finalist placement for the Georgina Joshi Fellowship (2024), and the Joshi International Fellowship (2023).

Music and community have always been central to Macey’s life. She has approximately ten years of experience singing and serving as a section leader in church choirs, including at Canterbury United Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church in Bloomington. She currently serves as a soprano section leader at North Shore Unitarian Church in Deerfield, Illinois.

Macey holds a Master of Music in Voice and a Performance Diploma from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she was a Performance Fellow, as well as a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance with Disciplinary Honors from Birmingham-Southern College. Her greatest joy is working with children and helping them discover the confidence, creativity, and sense of wonder that music can bring. She hopes to inspire every student she works with to carry a lifelong love of music—and especially opera—with them.