4 minute read

ANDREW EGBUCHIEM

from Musicman Magazine

by Musicwoman and Musicman Magazines

from Musicman Magazine, page 13

Musicman Magazine

Countertenor Opera and Nigerian Art Songs Singer

ANDREW EGBUCHIEM

Andrew Egbuchiem’s singing started in high school at an allboys seminary. He sang in the boys’ choir at school. At this time, singing had become a very serious dream. “My mother was totally against my studying music. Most Nigerian parents don’t believe that musicians have a job or that studying music is lucrative,” Andrew lamented. The singing gift trickled down from his dad, so, he wasn’t the only singer in the house. He listened to his father’s stories of singing in the choir. His parents forbade him to sing in the choir and that’s where the journey ended for him.

Andrew insisted that, “There was this natural force propelling me to pursue music. I was hell-bent on studying music. I had to stand up for myself.” After high school, he joined the children or youth choir. He was the first boy to sing soprano in the church choir. After his debut as a soloist in Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, at 18, with the Holy Child Choir, in Lagos Nigeria, he knew that music was his calling. It was something that he had to pursue.

Eventually, he joined a professional choir. He went to college to study music, graduated, and continued

by Grace Joy Reid

to sing. Andrew sang tenor, briefly, while singing as a countertenor. Then, he met a renowned musician in Nigeria, who said with strong conviction, “You are good enough for the opera stage in Italy!” But Andrew didn’t take him seriously because he was torn between a career as a tenor or a countertenor. Three years later, his mentor passed away and that made Andrew chose to be a countertenor.

“I launched my career, officially, with my Promoting Classical Music in Nigeria Concert Tour, accompanied by Norwegian pianist, Geir Henning Braaten. Most of the audience was the diplomatic community in Nigeria,” Andrew recounted. In 2012, he went to Bulgaria, the place that created the current version of Andrew. I got a lot of encouragement and a surprise radio interview. From 2013 to 2014, he toured the U.S., Kenya, and Europe in Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland, and Latvia. In 2015, he took a residency in upstate New York. Upon completion, Andrew decided that New York City was his destination as a musician.

Andrew is an opera singer, specializing in Baroque music and Nigerian Art songs. His

new, collaboration, The African Serenades, to be released in July, was motivated by recordings he made with other singers, during the Singer of United Land Tour from 2013 to 2014. This album is a compilation of African Art Music with special emphasis on Nigerian Music for reference and education.

In 2019, Andrew performed with the Vertical Players Repertory as a soloist in The Constitution, a secular oratorio by Benjamin Yarmonlinsky, and as an Alto Soloist in Pergolesi’s Magnificat and Charpentier’s Missa de minuet pour noel with the Brooklyn Philharmonia Chorus.

“I am aware of the challenges woman face in music. Women are more scrutinized than men, based on their looks and how they dress,” Andrew offered, “My advice for a young person entering music is to have patience and continue to work hard.”