By final curtain, McGrew had announced himself as an irresistible force of the recital stage. His voice floated and soared with unfettered radiance: light and fluid, yet uncannily full. McGrew’s sound is supremely honest, a pure, straightforward use of an instrument that aspires to emulate no other singer.
— Emery Kerekes for San Francisco Classical Voice
Tenor Daniel McGrew can sing a song. Any song, it seems. It is as easy to imagine him in a nightclub or on a Broadway stage as singing an art song in recital.
— Rick Perdian for Seen and Heard International
Tenor Daniel McGrew scaled his voice to perfectly suit the hall. There was never a note when his voice was anything less than lovely, and it is indeed a beautiful instrument; coupled with his innate musical elegance, it made for some truly magical moments.
— Rick Perdian for Seen and Heard International
Three of the main parts were taken by recent graduates of Tanglewood’s vocal program; greater testament to its worth would be hard to imagine…Daniel McGrew was eerily believable portraying the soldier-technocrat Mortimer’s earnest association of orderly progress with the necessity of killing.
— David Allen for the New York Times
Lyric tenor Daniel McGrew drew a complex, beautifully sung and articulated portrait; a career to watch.
—David Shengold for Opera News
McGrew was impressive in his vocal versatility, able to sound stentorian when needed, yet lyric and vulnerable when the music called him to be. His rendition of Benjamin Britten’s desolate song from his Winter Words cycle, “Midnight on the Great Western,” based upon a Thomas Hardy poem, was particularly moving.