ABOUT
Recognized as a "gorgeous-voiced soprano," (Broadway World), Hailey McAvoy is a versatile performer of opera, concert works, and song.
In 2025, McAvoy appeared as Mem, the lead role in the world premiere of Paola Prestini's SENSORIUM EX with Beth Morrison Projects and Vision into Art at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha, Nebraska. Also in 2025, she appeared as an artist in residence at Hogfish Regenerative Arts Festival, where she sang the role of Zora in Svadba. Other operatic highlights include The Taller Daughter (Mazzoli, Proving Up; Aspen Music Festival), Julia Child (Hoiby, Bon Apétit; Opera Praktikos) and Page of Herodias (Salome; Fisher Center for the Performing Arts) Third Woodsprite (Dvorak, Rusalka; Opera Ithaca) and Third Lady (Magic Flute, MassOpera).
Equally active as a concert performer, McAvoy has recently appeared in concert with the Metropolitan Opera as part of Opera Evolved at National Sawdust. Other concert highlights include in recital at the Greene Space, as guest soloist in Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Baton Rouge Symphony and as a soloist in the Seattle-based concert series Byron Schenkman & Friends. She has also appeared at Bard Music Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room (New York, NY), as a guest recitalist at the historic Beattie Powers Place Mansion (Catskill, NY) , as a Colburn Fellow at Songfest (Los Angeles, CA) as a guest artist with the LYNX Project Artsong Initiative.
In addition to her work on the opera stage, McAvoy is currently developing Wholly Unwinding, her own concert of original music, drawings, and monologues that address themes of embodiment and disability. Wholly Unwinding was first workshopped at Hogfish Regenerative Arts and has been further developed at Spiral Songs and National Sawdust.
As a performer with the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, McAvoy is committed to amplifying the discussion around disability in the arts in order to make the performing arts more inclusive for all. She has spoken and written about accessibility in the arts for such organizations as the National Endowment For the Arts, AGMAzine, Classical Singer, the Common Senses Festival, and Opera America.
Aug 2025
Recognized as an “excellent performer” (Millbrook Independent) and a “gorgeous-voiced soprano,” (Broadway World), singer Hailey McAvoy is committed to sharing authentic performances, whether she brings an operatic character or a poem to life. As a singing artist with mild cerebral palsy, McAvoy’s authenticity includes embracing physical disability in her life onstage and off.
SINGING WITH
CEREBRAL PALSY
I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts on singing with Cerebral Palsy. For as long as I have been singing, I’ve been engaged in conversations around navigating physical disability onstage. When I was younger, I received many different messages, ranging from, “You can do anything!” to, more or less, “You should hide your disability because no one will hire you if they think you can’t move.” At this point, my greatest source of anxiety around my cerebral palsy is not the way it actually affects me and my singing, but rather the ways people might assume it affects me and my singing. In creating this page, I hope to offer some background information about what cerebral palsy is, as well as dispel myths around what it implies, or not, for me as a performer.
More than simply clarifying what my experience with disability really looks like, I hope that my decision to include this discussion of Cerebral Palsy on my website will encourage other performers to speak openly about their own experiences with disability. In my experience, acknowledging my disability and asking for help when I need it has served as a way to cultivate love and trust between myself and others. It is my firm belief that including disability in narratives onstage is a way to cultivate authenticity in our society. By acknowledging disability and inviting it to be present in the narratives we present onstage, we more truly reflect the diversity of the world in which our art exists, and we harness the connective power of art to include a wider perspective in the stories we tell.