"Mahogany music..."

- Gabriela Frank, composer

"Take McClellan's music as a reminder and a gentle
admonition that no matter how ancient the music,
the door to reinterpretation is never shut. McClellan
pulls new life from centuries-old choral styles, drawing
on their native spiritual power and recasting them in
the haunting arrangements of the new avant-garde."

- Editor, Download.com

"[Flight of the Earls was]...a hit with the crowd..."

- Geraldine Freedman, Daily Gazette (Schenectady NY)

"...a vivid sense of atmosphere and
narrative force...the audience loved it."

- Michael Miller, Berkshire Review

The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish (SSA voices) info

Flight of the Earls (Irish bagpipes, orchestra - expt) info

This Ravelled Dust (choir, soloists, instruments - expt) info

Browse Choral and Instrumental music

ABOUT ME
I write sacred and secular music for choir, orchestra, bagpipes, mixtures of the above, and other things. I also write about music as a scholar and reviewer, and I organize performances of newly-written music of all kinds, mainly as part of the El Salto project. Some wonderful performing groups have commissioned me to write music for them, and I've won various awards and fellowships for my music. In my free time I am a music professor and librarian.
full bio | a more personal bio | my city

Buy my music on

Become a fan!

This Ravelled Dust: Cantata for a Nuclear Age
received its world premiere on April 30 with the
Toronto Choral Artists (Mark Vuorinen, director) at the Music Gallery, Toronto

Song Overheard, a new commission from the Hudson Opera House for Moira Smiley and VOCO will be premiered at HOH on August 20, 2010

Nativity Kontakion and Gather Me, commissions for Greek Byzantine chorus with strings, from Nektarios Antoniou and Schola Cantorum, will be premiered in Fall 2010. Gather Me will feature the Orpheus Soloists, one of Europe's foremost chamber orchestras, led by Dimitris Kitsos

El Salto debuted in NYC on April 23 at the NY Society for Ethical Culture

Buy Music by Heart, the paperless hymnal, for use at home or at church (includes songs I wrote)

The Highland Bagpipe: Music, History, Tradition a new book from Ashgate (I wrote chapter 13); also read my original thesis, now also e-published at the Piobaireachd Society.

Christmas/Advent/Epiphany choral anthems
(plan early for next year!) O Antiphons + Come Emmanuel (Advent hymn) They Worship Without Words (3 Kings/Epiphany)