About

Conner David McCain is Professor and Director of Sacred Music at Saint Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York. He holds a PhD in Music Composition from the University of Aberdeen where he studied under Professor Phillip A. Cooke, and has an MMus from the Catholic University of America and an MA in Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. His works have been performed all over the world by ensembles such as Voces8, the Choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the Choir of Robinson College, Cambridge.

 

As an organist, he has given concerts and recitals in Indiana, New York, Texas, Washington, D.C., and the Isle of Wight in the UK. These concerts have often featured collaborations with voices and instrumentalists in a variety of repertoire, ranging from the early Baroque, such as Tomaso Albinoni and Carlo Lonati, to the contemporary, such as Sir James MacMillan and Pēteris Vasks.

 

Finally, as a writer and researcher, he has been published in the Humanum Review’s online art review, ArteFact, and has presented papers on religion and music at Benedictine College, Hillsdale College, Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews, and the Universities of Dallas and Tennessee including a lecture on the relationship between Olivier Messiaen and Pope Francis’s environmental theology, “Olivier Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles: How Love for Creation Inspires Creativity,” at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting.

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When he's not composing, you might find him training for a marathon or gardening at his home in the beautiful Hudson Valley with his two children and wife.