Loeffler Alumni Series: Grace McNally

Guitarist, songwriter, and Levine alum Grace McNally returns for a special performance for our Levine community.

About Grace McNally

For Grace McNally,  music is a way to blend traditions, discover connections, and cultivate inspiration through storytelling. She views her role as a songwriter as a “seamstress weaving different patterned fabrics to create new designs.” Her debut album, Full Circle, explores the musical connections between the American Southeast, Northeast Brazil, and West Africa.

McNally creates a global community through her podcast and radio show Travel Notes. Conceived during quarantine, Travel Notes is “a way to travel through music and explore ways we are all connected.“ Listeners are transported passport-free to Senegal, Argentina, Japan, and beyond through musical narrative, history, and cultural traditions.

McNally studied under Risa Carlson, a student of Manuel Barrueco, at Levine Music for six years. She participated in regional competitions in DC, performed at the French Embassy, and participated in master classes with David Russel and Nicholas Goluses. In 2009, she received an invitation to Michelle Obama’s Classical Music Workshop. She studied Classical Guitar Performance under Grammy-nominated guitarist Marc Regnier at The College of Charleston with a music scholarship.

After furthering her musical education by traveling through Central and South America, she returned to Charleston in 2019. She began to lay the framework for her debut album, Full Circle, which will be released on May 4, 2023. She continues to write and perform in the low country and currently is the station manager for Charleston’s first and only community-supported radio station, WOHM Radio 96.3FM.

Learn more about Grace on her website.