About
A native of Jackson, MS, Mary Margaret May, soprano, graduated in May of 2010 with a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance at Mississippi College and two years later earned her Masters of Music in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy from the same institution. During her undergraduate years, Ms. May was extremely involved in many opera and musical productions in the Department of Music at Mississippi College. She has appeared as Lily in Lucy Simon’s The Secret Garden, Tuptim in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, First Lady in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Cinderella in Warren Martin’s The True Story of Cinderella, Just Jeanette in Edwin Penhorwood’s Too Many Sopranos, Gertie in Rodger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, and recently as Meg in Jason Howland’s Little Women. She has also appeared as Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, Cosette in Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Miserables, and the partial roles Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She has received numerous awards through the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) competitions held throughout the southeast in both classical and music theatre divisions. Ms. May has studied with Metropolitan Opera soprano Katie Van Kooten and internationally acclaimed voice teacher and former Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Patricia McCaffrey of New York, NY. During her undergraduate and masters degree programs at Mississippi College, she was a student of Dr. Kristen Johnson of Meridian, MS. She has attended the prestigious young artists programs Intermezzo Foundation in Brugge, Belgium and Songfest at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.
During her time at Mississippi College, Ms. May sang for four years with the prestigious, award-winning auditioned choir, Singers, and traveled with them to Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, New York (where she was a featured soloist at Carnegie Hall in the choir’s performance of Bob Chilcott’s MLK), and several conferences and churches around the U.S. She was also a member of the Mixed Company vocal jazz ensemble at Mississippi College for two years and was selected by the Music Department to work as an Ambassador, which involved encouraging students to pursue a music degree at the MC. She was also actively involved with Mississippi College’s Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) and would assist with the worship music as a vocalist. During the summer months, Ms. May serves as a tutor at Neighborhood Christian Center, a program for underprivileged children in the Jackson area sponsored by her church. She also volunteered with the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and regularly sings at nursing homes around the Metro-Jackson area.
Ms. May enjoys spending time with her husband and visits home whenever she can. She loves learning how to cook challenging dishes, making her home beautiful, hosting parties, birdwatching, but most of all she is passionate about singing what she believes. She is very proud of all three of her albums of hymns and enjoys witnessing the continued impact they have on people around the world. Her most popular song on iTunes, Spotify and Pandora is "I Come to the Garden" with over 15,000 listens.
In October of 2015, Ms May married a United States Naval Officer and has since lived in Annapolis (MD), Newport (RI), Pearl Harbor (HI) and is currently residing in Virginia Beach (VA) were she solos regularly at the First Presbyterian Church of Virginia Beach. She is also very involved in her community and serves on the board of her neighborhood's Civic League.