A graduate of Oberlin and The Juilliard School, Andrea Cawelti began her career as an operatic mezzo-soprano. The recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including winning the Met Competition, she has sung with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Opera, and the Columbus Symphony, among others.

An abiding interest in the history of musicians led her to the New York Public Library Music Division in 1985. During her ten-year tenure there, she processed copious music-related archival collections and managed their work-study program.

Cawelti moved to Chicago in 1995, retiring from the operatic stage to become an archivist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where she processed and cataloged the Theodore Thomas Music Library. When the Symphony Archives were reduced in 2002, she became cataloger for the Ward Collection at the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University. This position moved to the Houghton Library in 2006, where she remains at this time. She has an MSLIS from Drexel University, and has previously presented for MLA on bound volumes of sheet music.