Mack McCray received his B.M. and M.S. from The Juilliard School, where he studied under Irwin Freundlich. He won the Silver medal in the International George Enesco Competition, first prize in the Charleston Symphony and San Francisco Young Artists competitions, Juilliard’s Edward Steuermann Memorial Prize, and a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation ‑ all in one season (1969‑1970). He has been invited guest artist at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Seville’s Great Interpreters Cycle, the UNESCO Festival of International Artists at Monte Carlo, the Bucharest Philharmonic’s Bach/Beethoven/Brahms Festival, and the Hong Kong City Hall Series.

He has performed under such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Edo de Waart, Josef Krips, Leon Fleisher, and Arthur Fiedler. In 1991, he performed the U.S. premiere of John Adams’s Eros Piano. Recently he has performed with the Japan Philharmonic in Suntory Hall, Tokyo, at the Shanghai International Beethoven Festival and on the Trinity Church Concert Series in Manhattan.  Mack McCray is Artistic Director of Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy, and from 1971 to 2015 he  served on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.