*WOMEN CHORAL CONDUCTORS AND CLINICIANS YOU NEED TO KNOW*

Courtesy of Dr. Janet Galván

https://www.facebook.com/janet.galvan.520

I have been compelled to support female performers and highlight the fact that so many express power and strength. For this series, I am borrowing the unofficial title from Ruby Bridges, an American civil rights activist. She was the first Black child to attend the then all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the time of New Orleans school desegregation on November 14, 1960. When shown a picture of Vice President Harris walking with the shadow of Bridges as a child on the wall, Bridges called the picture “Shadows and Shoulders.” What a beautiful sentiment! And that is exactly how our careers and lives have developed – We stand in the shadows and on the shoulders of all the women before us who paved the way.

March 1 - Doreen Rao is a distinguished conductor and master teacher committed to the dynamic intersections linking choral artistry and music education. Recipient of the 2019 Robert Shaw lifetime achievement award from the American Choral Directors Association for her extraordinary contributions to choral music, Doreen’s seminal work has inspired generations of young singers, accomplished choral teachers and celebrated conductors.

During her formative association with the Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, she prepared the Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus for concerts and recorded performances, winning four Grammy Awards and a Grand Prix du Disque with Sir George Solti, Margaret Hillis, Claudio Abbado and James Levine. As assistant conductor for the Chicago Symphony Chorus, Doreen’s apprenticeship with Margaret Hillis informed her orchestral and choral conducting with a legacy of deep musicianship and enduring professionalism.

Doreen founded and chaired the first ACDA National Committee for Children’s Choirs organizing an inspired divisional and state leadership across the country. She inspired and edited a massive choral repertoire for young treble and SATB choirs, published by Boosey & Hawkes as Choral Music Experience (CME). During the same period, she produced an innovative and on-going professional development curriculum dedicated to emerging conductors and choral teachers, founded as the CME Institute and Certification Courses in Choral Teacher Education.

The first woman to hold an endowed chair in conducting, Doreen carries the prestigious Elmer Iseler Chair in Conducting Emeritus at the University of Toronto in perpetuity. She founded and conducted the Faculty of Music MacMillan Singers and Bach Festival Singers for frequent concert collaborations with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Collaborating with the distinguished conductor and Bach scholar Helmuth Rilling, Rao led Canada’s International Bach Festival hosted by the University of Toronto in partnership with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the International Bach Academy Stuttgart. Doreen recently signed with GIA Publications in Chicago as Series Editor of the forthcoming Global Encounters for Young Choirs. She is the author of Circle of Sound Voice Education, a book that serves as the philosophical and practical foundation for her innovative mindfulness approach to conducting and teaching.

Having retired after thirty five years as Professor of Choral Music from San Jose State University, Dr. Charlene Archibeque continues to remain active in the choral field as clinician, guest conductor, adjudicator, teacher. As a teacher of teachers her choral workshops throughout the world are acclaimed as "practical, comprehensive, and insightful". Her summer workshops at SJSU and for many ACDA State and other University workshops attracted thousands of participants. She appeared on the faculty for Westminster's "Five Perspectives", twice at the Santa Fe "Perspectives", the Four Corners Workshops in Arizona, for both the Tennessee and Oklahoma Fine Arts Institutes, and for many Invitational Festivals. Some of her areas of expertise include conducting technique, vocal training in the choral rehearsal, musicianship skills, rehearsal technique, choral diction, blend and tone quality, as well as performance practices with historical perspective.

While serving as Director of Choral Activities at SJSU she successfully recruited an impressive number of talented singers and conductors to the University and guided several thousands in their choral studies. Over 80 conductors completed their Masters Degrees in Choral Conducting under her supervision and are now in positions of choral leadership throughout the United States, many as University Choral Conductors and Directors of Choral Activities themselves.

While at SJSU Dr. Archibeque conducted both the Concert Choir and the renowned SJSU Choraliers in hundreds of concerts, including preparing and conducting the choirs in over 160 major works with orchestra. For thirty years she collaborated with conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, George Cleve, Leonid Grin, and Samuel Cristler. For over twenty five years she provided the greater San Jose Community with a series of outstanding Scholarship Concerts at St. Joseph Cathedral, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for music scholarships and featuring many solo singers who have gone on to professional careers. Her choirs were selected to perform at twenty five Regional, Divisional, State, and National Conventions of the American Choral Directors Association.

Dr. Archibeque has served as Headliner, panelist, presenter, speaker, and clinician worldwide, including the World Choral Symposium in Rotterdam, Holland 1999, the National Federation of Music Societies in York, England 1989 (first woman and first American ), and the first National Australian Choral Symposium in Melbourne in 1986 as well as the International Music Worskhops in Lausanne, Switzerland and the USAREU in Berchtesgaden, Germany. She has conducted in many of the major concert halls of the world including Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Royal Albert Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic and Shauspielhall with her own choirs and as guest conductor of various Honor Choirs.

The SJSU Choraliers under Dr. Archibeque recorded seven professional Compact Disks and completed sixteen concert tours to Europe, Mexico and Australia. Winners of seven of the most prestigious competitions in Europe, they were named "Choir of the World" in 1991 at the Wales Eisteddfod, winner of the famed Grand Prix in Tallin, Estonia 1994 and and winner in the Spittal, Austria competition among others. In Gorizia, Italy, 1996 Dr. Archibeque won the coveted Best Conductor award along with six other trophies including winner of the Folk Music Category.

Prior to 1970, Dr. Archibeque taught for thirteen years in San Diego at all levels of public school music and taught the first experimental program in team teaching at the junior high level. In Northern California she served as Minister of Music for the Burlingame Presbyterian Church.

During her teaching career she was asked to conduct All-State Choirs and Honor and Festival Choirs in forty four of the fifty states, six provinces of Canada, and for Divisional Honor Choirs of the Music Educators National Conference and the American Choral Directors Association. Named one of the top ten honor choir clinicians in America in the 1988 ACDA survey, she continues to enjoy directing and workshopping with choirs at all levels. Her rehearsals are acclaimed for keeping singers intellectually involved, constantly inspired to achieve deep levels of communication with the audience, and magically tuned in to their own highest capabilities.

María Guinand, awarded the 2009 Helmuth Rilling Prize by the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, is a Venezuelan choral music educator who has gained international renown through her work as a conductor, teacher, and advocate of the choral art. A leader in the development of choral music education in Venezuela, she has been instrumental in the development and success of the Fundación Schola Cantorum and the choral program at the Universidad Simón Bolívar. As part of her work at the Fundación Schola Cantorum, Guinand has taught hundreds of singers over the years and established an instructional system similar to that of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela also known as FESNOJIV created by José Antonio Abreu. This system has allowed Guinand to impact the lives of many Venezuelan children through choral music, directly and indirectly. Furthermore, her work as a conductor of the Schola Cantorum and the Cantoría Alberto Grau has gained her numerous musical accolades, including a Grammy Award nomination in 2002 for Best Choral Performance for the recording of La Pasión Según San Marcos, composed by Osvaldo Golijov. In addition, María Guinand was a professor of music at the Universidad Simón Bolívar for over twenty-five years. There she taught an array of music courses and conducted the Orfeón Universitario Simón Bolívar; under her direction, this choir recorded and toured extensively. One of her most important contributions to this institution is the creation of the master’s degree program in choral conducting, which has given her national and regional visibility. As a leader and promoter of choral music, Guinand has been at the forefront of several organizations, including the Academia Bach de Venezuela, the International Federation for Choral Music, and the development of the Andean Project of Social Action through Music. This study documents and preserves a history of Guinand’s contributions within the field of choral music in Venezuela and abroad.

March 2 - Marguerite L. Brooks served for thirty-five years as chair of the conducting program at the Yale School of Music and director of choral music at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. As founding conductor of the Yale Camerata, one of Yale’s first campus/city arts collaborations, Brooks led hundreds of musical performances featuring some of the most innovative and wide-ranging programming in the field. She has long been a champion of new music by composers of a diverse array of gender, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. The Camerata and its chamber chorus have performed music from the middle ages to the present day, and the catalogue of composers ranges from Albinoni to Argento, from Palestrina to Pärt–along with Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Tawnie Olson, Aaron Jay Kernis, Caroline Shaw, Robert Kyr, Reena Esmail, and many more.

Brooks’s former students occupy positions of musical leadership at major churches and cathedrals around the world and in leading academic institutions. Among her students are the founding conductors of Grammy-nominated choirs Conspirare, Roomful of Teeth, and Seraphic Fire. Brooks has been active as a guest conductor, teacher, and clinician. She was a juror for the Eric Ericson conducting competition in Sweden, and has conducted, given master classes, taught, and adjudicated in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. She holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College and Temple University, and has served on the faculties of Smith and Amherst Colleges and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Brooks was cited by the Yale School of Music for cultural leadership in music, and has received alumni awards for distinguished work in her field from both Mount Holyoke College and Temple University. Presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Connecticut chapter of the American Choral Directors Association in 2016 and by Choral Arts New England in 2019, Brooks is proud to have been honored as a Woman in History by the Barnard School. In 2020 Brooks received the Helen Kemp Award for Lifetime Commitment to Excellence in Choral Music from the Eastern Region ACDA. The National Collegiate Choral Organization, of which Brooks is a charter member and an honorary life member, celebrated her retirement in 2020 by initiating the Marguerite L. Brooks Commissioning Fund for New Choral Music.

Dr. Edith A. Copley is a Regents’ Professor and Director of Choral Studies at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She conducts the highly acclaimed Shrine of the Ages Choir (founded in 1933) and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in conducting and graduate choral literature. The Shrine of the Ages Choir has performed at state, regional and national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education, and Carnegie Hall. NAU choral ensembles under her direction have toured internationally to Western Europe, the Peoples Republic of China, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Bulgaria, Istanbul, Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia performing in many beautiful and historic venues.

Prior to her NAU appointment, she taught secondary choral music for seven years in the Midwest and four years overseas at the American International School in Vienna, Austria. She has also served as the assistant and interim principal conductor of the May Festival Chorus that performs with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops preparing choral/orchestral works for the late Robert Shaw, James Conlon, Jesus Lobez-Cobes, and the late Erich Kunzel.

In spring 2016, Dr. Copley retired as Music Director of the Master Chorale of Flagstaff (MCF). She led this auditioned 100-voice community chorus for 23 years. MCF performed three concerts each season as well as a major choral/orchestral work each spring with the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra (FSO). Copley has conducted numerous major works with the FSO, including Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Bach’s B Minor Mass, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Duruflé’s Requiem and Britten’s War Requiem. In 1999 she served as the Resident Conductor for the FSO's 50th Anniversary Season.

Dr. Copley has served as the President of the Western Division of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), President of the Arizona ACDA, editor for the Arizona and Western Division ACDA newsletters, interest session chair for the 2011 and 2019 ACDA National Conferences, and has conducted the 2013 ACDA National Mixed Honor Choir in Dallas as well as the NAfME All-National Mixed Honor Choir in the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Dr. Copley has received numerous honors, including NAU School of Performing Arts Centennial Teacher of the Year Award, Arizona Music Educator of the Year, Arizona ACDA Outstanding Choral Director Award, the Viola Award in Music from the city of Flagstaff, and the Weston H. Noble Award from her alma mater Luther College.

Dr. Copley has her own choral series with Santa Barbara Music Publications and is in high demand as a clinician, adjudicator and guest conductor in the US and abroad. She has conducted all-state choirs in over 30 states, and choral festivals in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Dr. Copley has conducted international choral festivals in Germany, the Netherlands, Tasmania, Japan, Luxembourg, Australia, China, Turkey, England, Poland, and Oman. She will serve as Artist-in-Residence for the Delaware Choral Academy in Aix-en-Provence, France in July 2019.

Sigrid Johnson served as an artist in residence on the voice and choral faculty at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, for 32 years. During her tenure as conductor of Manitou Singers, the 100-voice chorus for first-year women at St. Olaf, Johnson inspired more than 3,200 young women. She has been a lecturer and guest clinician at choral workshops and all-state music festivals in over 30 states, and she continues to enrich the musical experience of countless singers of all ages across the country. Johnson is known for her skill at blending voices, perfecting tone and assisting with vocal production — both psychologically and physiologically. Johnson earned a bachelor of music degree in vocal performance from St. Cloud State University and a master of music degree in vocal performance from the University of Michigan. Prior to teaching at St. Olaf, she was on the voice faculty at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Johnson also served as the associate conductor of VocalEssence and as the music director of the Dale Warland Symphonic Chorus. She presented at the World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2002, in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2008 and in Puerto Madryn, Argentina in 2011. In October 2004, Mrs. Johnson was a featured lecturer and clinician at the Australian National Choral Directors National Conference in Adelaide. In 2006 she was a member of the esteemed jury for the Bela Bartok International Choral Competition in Debrecen, Hungary. She also maintained an active schedule as a guest conductor and clinician at choral festivals and all-state music festivals across the country and has conducted choral workshops in Australia. She has prepared symphonic choruses for Neemi Jarvi, Sir Neville Mariner, David Zinman, Stanislaw Skrowaczewsky, Gerard Swartz, Edo de Waart, and Leonard Slatkin among others.

Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell a native New Yorker now living in Washington, DC is the only child and perfect blend of her mother, a registered nurse and her father, a classical violinist. Dr. Barnwell studied violin for 15 years beginning at age 2 ½, and majored in music through high school. With this background, she went on to earn the Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Speech Pathology (SUNY, Geneseo, 1967, 1968), Doctor of Philosophy in Speech Pathology (University of Pittsburgh, 1975), and the Master of Science in Public Health (Howard University, 1981). In 1998, Dr. Barnwell was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by her alma mater, SUNY Geneseo. She recently received the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary in Chicago, IL (2009) and the Virginia Theological Seminary (2011); and in 2012, all members of Sweet Honey In the Rock, were awarded the Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from Chicago Theological Seminary (2012).

For over a decade, Dr. Barnwell was a professor at the College of Dentistry at Howard University, after which she conducted community based projects in computer technology and the arts, and administered health programs at Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Dr. Barnwell joined Sweet Honey In The Rock® in 1979 and her training as a Sing Language Interpreter, led her to facilitated the group’s tradition of including a Sign Language Interpreter in the ensemble. After 34 years Barnwell retired from Sweet Honey In The Rock to pursue her other interests.

Dr. Barnwell appears as a vocalist and/or instrumentalist on more than thirty recordings with Sweet Honey In The Rock as well as other artists. She has, for the past thirty years spent much of her time off stage working as a master teacher and choral clinician in African American cultural performance. Her workshop “Building a Vocal Community®: Singing in the African American Tradition” has during the past twenty-eight years, been conducted on three continents, making her work in the field a significant source of inspiration for both singers and non-singers, a model of pedagogy for educators, and cultural activists and historians.

Dr. Barnwell has been a commissioned composer on numerous choral, film, video, dance and theatrical projects including Sesame Street, Dance Alloy of Pittsburgh, David Rousseve’s Reality Dance Company, The New Spirituals Project, GALA Festival Choruses, MUSE: Cincinnati’s Women’s Chorus, The Steel Festival: Art of an Industry (Bethlehem, PA, The King’s Singers in England. In 1996 she was awarded the Bessie Award for her score Safe House: Still Looking, commissioned by Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. The year 2001 saw the premiere of the work Suite Death, a setting of four poems by Langston Hughes for baritone, choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Plymouth Music Series in Minneapolis, MN. In Feb. 2003, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, DC premiered Truth Pressed to Earth Shall Rise, a choral work, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most recently, she was commissioned by the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra and Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT to compose a musical setting for Marilyn Nelson’s epic poem Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem. This cantata premiered in Waterbury on May 9, 2009 and there have been three performances since. In 2011 Barnwell curated the year long FORTUNE’S BONES PROJECT® for the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland which featured public discussions and two performances of the cantata. Several other communities are now exploring how they might present the Project.

Barnwell’s music, published by Barnwell’s Notes, Inc. and distributed by The Musical Source, Washington, DC has been performed and recorded by numerous choral ensembles and individual artists as well as Sweet Honey In The Rock.

In addition to these endeavors, Dr. Barnwell is an actress whose credits include voice-over narration for film, video and radio productions including the NPR documentary: W.C. Handy’s Blues, appearances in the film Beloved, directed by Jonathan Demme, and the TV show A Man Called Hawk. She is producer of Sweet Honey’s twenty-fifth anniversary recording, ...TWENTY-FIVE..., and Endings and Beginnings: Sweet Honey In The Rock Community Chorus. Her workshop Building a Vocal Community® has been produced as a boxed instructional set: Singing in the African American Tradition. Volume Two of this set will be released in June 2009 marking the 25th year of the workshop and outreach to ever expanding audiences. She is editor of, Continuum: The First Songbook of Sweet Honey In The Rock. Her first children’s book, No Mirrors In My Nana’s House, illustrated by Synthia Saint James and published by Harcourt was released in 1998. A second children’s book, We Are One illustrated by Brian Pinckney and published by Harcourt is anticipated in spring of 2008. In October 2000, Sounds True released UM HMM, a feast of personal and traditional African American stories, poems and songs for children produced by Windhorse Productions. Four axioms have proven significant in Barnwell’s life. To whom much is given, much is required. As one door closes, another door opens. Everything matters. Say Yes!

As conductor, pedagogue, and scholar, Sandra Snow is widely acknowledged as one who brings singers of all ages and abilities to artful performance through an understanding of the music and its context in the world around them. As Professor of Choral Conducting and Music education at the Michigan State University College of Music, the MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble has appeared as featured performers at American Choral Directors Association conventions at state, regional, and national levels. As guest conductor, she travels extensively in North America and abroad.

In 2017 Snow created Mirabai, a project-based professional women’s chorus. Mirabai features alumna associated with the MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble. Mirabai was a featured ensemble at the Texas Choral Director’s Association conference in 2018. The inaugural recording, Ecstatic Songs, was released in 2018. Mirabai will open the 2020 conference of the Southwest Division of the American Choral Director’s Association.

Snow is the Chair of the MSU Music Education Area and the Artistic Director of the CME Institute for Choral Teacher Education produced annually at MSU. Snow is author of the DVD "Conducting-Teaching: Real World Strategies for Success" published by GIA (2009), a resource for conductor-teachers at all levels of teaching. She edits the choral music series In High Voice published by Boosey & Hawkes. Snow is a recipient of the Michigan State University William J. Beal Award for Outstanding Faculty, the MSU Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Dortha J. and John D. Withrow award for Excellence in Teaching.

March 4-Dr. Barbara Wesley Baker, internationally noted conductor and educator, conducted the Women's, Men's, Concert Chorale, Gospel, and Chamber Choirs at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, and for 24 years has directed the Gospel Choir at Colesville United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her choirs won numerous first place trophies and received superior ratings at state, national and international festivals. Dr. Baker frequently presents sessions at national, division, and state conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association. She was a headliner at the Southwest Division MENC/TMEC conference on Urban Education in Dallas, Texas, June 2003. She also presented sessions at PERSPECTIVES Music Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June, 2003. She has conducted master classes at Ithaca College with Dr. Janet Galvan, Virginia Wesleyan College Church Music Workshop, the Toronto International Music Festival and the Choral Music Experience/British Choral Institute, Hertfordshire, England for Dr. Doreen Rao. Dr. Baker conducted the 2000 ACDA Eastern Division High School Honor Choir, and her Chamber Choir performed with Dave Brubeck at the 2000 MENC National Convention in Washington, D.C. She has guest-conducted state and regional honor choirs in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Mississippi, New York, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Virginia. Dr. Baker has taught and conducted secondary school students in Limerick and Dublin, Ireland for the Royal Dublin Society. Dr. Baker has taught at the Hartt School of Music Summer Session with Dr. Doreen Rao, McDaniel College, (formerly Western Maryland College) and at the Brightleaf Music Workshop at Duke University. For three years Dr. Baker was co-music director for The Choral Arts Society of Washington's Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Choral Tribute at the John F. Kennedy Center. Her Women's Choir performed on the 2003 program as a featured choir heard in January 2004 on the National Public Radio broadcast of last year's concert.

Dr. Baker earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; the M.A. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, N.Y.; and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland. While completing her doctorate, she was selected as an American Association of University Women Research Fellow. She has published articles in scholarly journals, including The College Music Society, and contributed material on Black Gospel music to several textbooks. She is a contributor to Teacher to Teacher, A Music Educator's Survival Guide (2004). She is editor of a new choral series with Alliance Music Publications and was honored as a 1998 Maryland Distinguished Woman in the Arts and as the Outstanding Secondary Vocal Music Teacher in Maryland in 1991. She is past president of the Maryland ACDA chapter and serves on the Advisory Board for the music education publication, Teaching Music. . She is married and is the proud parent of a former Yale varsity football player.

Dr. Sharon A. Hansen is Emerita Professor of Conducting and Choral Music at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. A dynamic and compelling conductor and master teacher, Hansen is active as a guest conductor and clinician throughout the United States and in Europe. She served as guest conductor for the Romanian National Radio Choir (Bucharest); the Gächinger Kantorei and Bach Collegium-Stuttgart; the Stockholm Conservatory Chamber Choir; the Moldavian and Oltenian Philharmonic Choirs (Iasì and Craiova, Romania); and taught at the University of Regensburg (Germany), where she served as Director of the Symphony Orchestra. She has presented master classes in conducting in Romania’s Academy of Music (Bucharest) and Ovidius University (Constanza), and was guest lecturer at the first and second annual Romanian National Choral Director’s Association Conferences in Sinaia. She led the first International Choral Conducting Master class in Bucharest in September 2003, returning in 2004 for the second such master class. Hansen’s collegiate and professional ensembles have appeared at Carnegie Hall, and at state, regional and national MENC and ACDA conventions. She has been privileged to serve as guest conductor and clinician with all-state choirs, music festivals, and honor choirs in more than thirty states.

From 1998-2013, Hansen served as Founder and Music Director of the Milwaukee Choral Artists, one of only a handful of professional women’s vocal ensembles in the country. MCA frequently collaborated with Present Music, Milwaukee’s internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble, most notably in the presentation of Olivier Messiaen’s “Trois Petites Liturgies pour la Presence Divine” with members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Sharon A. Hansen, conducting). Equally well versed in early music, the Milwaukee Choral Artists also appeared three times in concert with the Boston Camerata, and performed with KITKA professional women’s ensemble. Hailed for its expressive singing, rich sound, and far-reaching musical repertoire, the ensemble performed music from more than forty world cultures in twenty-nine languages. The Milwaukee Choral Artists left behind a most impressive legacy of some fifty commissioned, premiered, and published new works.

Hansen enjoyed a long career as member of the Editorial Board of the Choral Journal, where, as founder and editor for “On the Voice,” she shepherded eighteen years of diverse articles on the subjects of vocal pedagogy and health. Hansen’s research on the voice has been presented at State, Regional, and National ACDA and NAfME Conventions; at the 2010 National NATS Convention; as well as in other local and national venues. Hansen is author of the book Helmuth Rilling: Conductor – Teacher, and author of an ACDA monograph titled The First Fifty Years: An Index of ACDA Convention Interest Sessions and Choral Journal Publications; Choral Textbooks; and Teacher Preparation Statistics 1959-2009, which chronicles the history of ACDA’s efforts in voice education, and features the best of the articles written for “On the Voice” since its inception. Her chapter on the status of female conductors in higher education, “Women, Conductors, and the Tenure Process: What’s Up in the Academy,” is found in the book Wisdom, Wit, and Will: Women Choral Conductors on their Art.

Hansen was a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Milwaukee Children’s Chorus; she also served on the Board of Directors for Milwaukee’s Early Music Now. In tribute to her influence on Southeast Wisconsin’s music scene, Hansen was the recipient of both the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Civic Music Association’s 2003 Award of Excellence in Choral Music. In 2010, she received the Outstanding Alumni Award from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In January 2014, she was presented with the Wisconsin Choral Directors’ Association highest meritorious honor, the Morris D. Hayes Award, presented to a choral conductor of “outstanding merit…who has demonstrated a commitment to choral music…and has made outstanding contributions to choral music in Wisconsin.” She has signature music series with both Santa Barbara Music Publishing and Hal Leonard Music Publishers. Her professional memberships include ACDA (American Choral Directors Association); Chorus America; IFCM (International Federation of Choral Music); NAfME (National Association for Music Educators); NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing); The VoiceCare Network; and The Voice Foundation, for which she was Treasurer and founding member of the Greater Milwaukee Area Chapter of the Voice Foundation, the United States’ first local chapter. Hansen recently served as Interim Director of Music and Arts at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church (Scottsdale AZ), a large church with a rich music tradition. She presently is Chorus Director for the Arizona Musicfest Festival Orchestra, and Membership Chair for the Arizona Chapter of the American Choral Directors’ Association.

Dr. Sharon J. Paul holds the Robert M. Trotter Chair of Music at the University of Oregon, where she currently serves as Interim Department Head of Music Performance and Director of Choral Activities. Her teaching includes graduate courses in choral conducting, repertoire, and pedagogy, along with conducting the internationally award-winning Chamber Choir.

In March 2020, Oxford University Press published Dr. Paul’s book, Art & Science in the Choral Rehearsal, which features many of the creative and evidence-based teaching strategies she has cultivated over her career.

The University of Oregon Chamber Choir has placed first or second in four international choral competitions, most recently winning first prize in the Chamber Choir category at the Grand Prix of Nations Competition in Gothenburg, Sweden in August 2019. Other international appearances include performing as part of Dr. Paul’s lecture demo “Conducting with the Brain in Mind: Techniques to Increase Singers Engagement in Rehearsal” at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona, Spain in 2017, where they also performed on the Circle Concert Series. In May 2015, the UO Chamber Choir was one of ten choirs worldwide invited to compete at the 14th International Chamber Choir Competition in Marktoberdorf, Germany, where the ensemble received second prize overall, won a special prize for the best interpretation of the compulsory work, and was the only student group to achieve a Level I recognition for an “excellent performance at the international level.” The UO Chamber Choir won first prize at the 2013 Fleischmann International Trophy Competition at the Cork International Choral Festival in Cork, Ireland, and took top honors in two categories at the 2011 Tallinn International Choral Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. The Chamber Choir became a resident ensemble of the Oregon Bach Festival in 2014, performing each summer under conductors such as Helmuth Rilling, Matthew Halls, John Nelson, Jane Glover, and Joann Falletta. University of Oregon choirs under Dr. Paul’s direction have performed at the National Association for Music Education’s state and divisional conferences, and at ACDA Northwestern Division conferences.

Dr. Paul has presented interest sessions at regional, state, division, national, and international conferences. She appears frequently as adjudicator, clinician, teacher, and honor choir director throughout the United States and abroad, with recent appearances nationally in Minnesota, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and internationally in Singapore, Estonia, Sweden, and England. In 2019, she received Oregon ACDA’s Podium Award for “outstanding contributions to the choral arts,” and in the fall of 2014 she received the University of Oregon’s Fund for Faculty Excellence Award.

Dr. Paul served as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and conductor of Chorissima and Virtuose, the organization’s acclaimed performance ensembles, from 1992 to July 2000. Under her leadership, the chorus released four compact discs, premiered major works by composers such as Chen Yi and Jake Heggie, represented the United States at four international festivals, and performed at the California Music Educators Association’s state conference, the American Choral Directors Association’s Western Division conference, and the International Society for Music Education’s international conference.

Dr. Paul appeared on screen with members of Chorissima in the film What Dreams May Come, and conducted SFGC singers for the soundtrack of The Talented Mr. Ripley. In June 2000, the SFGC was the first youth chorus to win the Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence, a national honor presented by Chorus America. In the same year, they were also awarded an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

From 1984 to 1992, Dr. Paul served as Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at California State University, Chico, where she directed a large choral program and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in conducting, choral literature, and the humanities. In 1990, she embarked on a three-week tour of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the Chico State choirs, and in 1991 Dr. Paul received the Outstanding Teacher Award at CSU, Chico.

A sought after conductor and clinician all across the United States and internationally, Dr. Pearl Shangkuan is a professor of Music at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she directs choirs and teaches choral conducting and choral literature. She is also the chorus master (endowed Covenant Chair) of the Grammy-nominated Grand Rapids Symphony. Her performances and preparation of choruses consistently receive outstanding reviews for their combination of precision, artistry and passion. In addition to her Mosaic: the Pearl Shangkuan choral series for earthsongs, she serves as the music editor of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship choral series, published by GIA.

Her choirs have performed at national, division and state conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and other professional music conferences in the United States. Recent conducting engagements took her to Austria, South Africa, Hong Kong, and all across the United States. She has conducted honor choirs for several ACDA divisions and has been a headliner for various ACDA state conferences. She has led performances and given workshops all across the US and in Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines), as well as in Austria, Australia, and Canada.

Dr. Shangkuan has served as guest faculty in prominent professional programs in the US including the Chorus America national conference conducting masterclass and its A Capella Conducting Masterclass, the University of Michigan Choral Conducting Symposium, the Westminster Choir College Summer Session among many others. She has conducted all-state, honor choirs and festivals in numerous states.

She has served on the National Board of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) as the president of the Central Division (2007-09), and as Michigan ACDA state president (2003-05). Prior to her appointment at Calvin College, Dr. Shangkuan taught at Rutgers University and at the Westminster Conservatory of Music of Rider University in New Jersey.

Recipient of the Grand Rapids YWCA's Tribute! Award for outstanding professional women, she is also a past recipient of its Woman of Achievement award. Dr. Shangkuan has also served on the national board of the Choristers Guild and the board of the New Jersey Music Teachers Association and the New Jersey ACDA. She is a member of the ACDA (American Choral Directors Association), Chorus America, IFCM (International Federation for Choral Music), and is a member of the Phi Kappa Lambda and Mu Phi Epsilon Music Honor Societies.

A student of pre-eminent American choral conductor and New York Philharmonic chorusmaster Dr. Joseph Flummerfelt, she received a Bachelor of Music in Church Music summa cum laude and Master of Music in Choral Conducting with distinction from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, and a DMA in Choral Conducting from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Dr. Lynda R. Hassaler assumed the directorship of the renowned Capital University Chapel Choir in July, 1990, making her the first woman to head a choral program at a Lutheran college or university. Now celebrating her 28th year, she loves her role as Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities in the Conservatory of Music at Capital University, in Columbus, Ohio, where she directs the Chapel Choir, Choral Union, and a cappella ensemble, Philomel; and teaches undergraduate and graduate conducting at Capital and Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Born and raised in Platte, South Dakota, (yes, people are from there!) she graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and received her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in conducting from Michigan State University.

Nurturing Capital University’s rich choral legacy, the choirs under her direction have received numerous invitations to perform for multiple music regional and national conferences and festivals, have been awarded gold medals in world choral competitions and have toured nationally and internationally. Dr. Hasseler is passionate about dynamic programming, creating concerts that “tell a story.” Her theme-based concerts feature classic and contemporary a cappella sacred and secular choral literature. Reflective of her commitment to perform music from a global perspective, performances under her feature diverse programming, staging, and a range of choral tone colors unified by a narrative theme. In partnership with Craig Courtney, she is co-editor of the Capital University Choral Series published by Beckenhorst Press and is a member of the Ohio Choral Directors Association board of directors. As a member of the Music for All National Artistic Advisory Committee, she is actively engaged with making music with young high school musicians.

On Leap Day, February 29, 2016, Dr. Hasseler made her conducting debut on Carnegie Hall stage, in performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Trinity Te Deum. As a clinician and guest conductor, she performs regionally, nationally and internationally. She serves on juries for international competitions including most recently the 14th Concorso Corale Internazionale Choir Festival and Competition in Riva del Garde, Italy and in July, 2018 on the jurors panel for Sing Berlin! International Festival.

As a singer, Dr. Hasseler has performed, toured and recorded nationally and internationally with professional choral ensembles including the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus. She toured France with the Shaw Festival Chorus and appeared as a soloist. In addition to the concerts presented in France, she also has performed several works in Carnegie Hall with both ensembles. She shares Grammy honors with the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra, which, under Helmuth Rilling’s direction, were awarded a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo.

Most recently, she, along with the Chapel Choir and Choral Union, and composer Jake Runestad, was awarded the 2017-18 American Prize, Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music. She recently had the honor of conducting the Chapel Choir in the premiere performance of the Brock Commission “A Silence Haunts Me” by Jake Runestad at the 2019 ACDA National Conference in Kansas City. In March, 2019 she shared the podium with guest conductor and composer Eric Whitacre on Mees Hall stage in a Gala concert celebration of 100 Years of Music at Capital University. In June, 2019, she will conduct the Chapel Choir in festival concerts in the Netherlands and Belgium featuring the music of Jake Runestad.

Above all, Dr. Hasseler loves making music with the students and community members in the ensembles she directs. A firm believer in the power of choral singing to open minds, soften hearts, and transform lives, she will tell you that making music in an engaged choral rehearsal, crafting an expressive phrase, and shaping beautiful choral tone with the “best students in the world” are some of the most meaningful moments life has to offer. None of those things can compete, however, with the joy of being a mom to twenty-one-year-old Hannah, the “best daughter in the world.”

Ruth E. Dwyer is internationally recognized as a treble and children’s choir specialist and Kodály educator. She has been the guest conductor for the OAKE National Children’s Choir, numerous ACDA All-State Choirs and Honor Choirs. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Hoosier Hills Choral Festival in Southern Indiana and Philthrusong.org (Philanthropy Through Song) choral festivals supporting anti-drunk driving education. She is a frequent guest conductor with the MidAmerica Productions and the New England Symphonic Wind Ensemble. She has recently traveled to São Paulo, Brazil to teach and conduct the GRAN FINALE XIII Festival Nacional de Corais Infantis e Jovens.

Mrs. Dwyer has been a conductor and Director of Education with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir for 29 years. She is celebrating her 22nd year as the Artistic Director of the Columbus Indiana Children’s Choir, a co-operative effort of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic Orchestra and the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. Her ensembles have performed for the Indiana Music Educators Association, the AOSA National Conference, in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, across the USA and throughout Spain and Central Europe. She has prepared ensembles for performances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Butler Nutcracker, Indianapolis Opera and numerous other organizations.

Mrs. Dwyer served the State of Indiana for 19 years as a public school music educator. Her teaching experiences include all levels of music instruction from 3 year old's to post graduate students. She has received the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic Golden Baton Award, the IMEA Elementary Music Teacher of the Year, the Hoosier Musician award and the Indianapolis Public Schools Rising Star award. She is an accomplished choral composer, arranger and editor.

Mrs. Dwyer has authored two curriculum books for ICC and is a frequent guest author for the Hal Leonard choral textbooks series. She is composer and editor for the Ruth Dwyer Choral Series @ Colla Voce. Mrs. Dwyer also teaches at Butler University and works as a studio conductor for The Choristers Guild. Ruth E. Dwyer is a graduate of Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She enjoys traveling, reading and gardening.

Dr. Felicia Barber is the Director of Choral Activities at Westfield State University in Westfield, MA, where she conducts the University Chorus, Chamber Chorale and teaches courses in conducting and choral methods. Dr. Barber's research interests include choral teaching strategies, repertoire selection, diversity initiatives, as well as the performance practice of African American Spirituals. Her research has led to presentations across the United States and Canada.

Dr. Barber presents professional development to choral music educators in Massachusetts & and throughout the northeast. She also has presented at regional and state conferences, as well as at the Phenomenon of Singing, an International Conference held in Newfoundland, Canada. With additional presentations at the National ACDA Conference, Eastern Division ACDA Conference, Massachusetts Summer ACDA Conference, Connecticut ACDA Conference, Massachusetts Music Educators Conference, Florida Music Educators Conference, and the Westfield University Summer Institute for Music Educators. Dr. Barber is an active member of American Choral Directors Association (ACDA); serving on the National Diversity Committee, on the Eastern Division 2020 Conference committee, and is the current President of the Massachusetts ACDA board.

Dr. Barber often serves as a guest clinician for both high school and community ensembles. She has served as guest conductor for the Massachusetts Western and Eastern District High School and Jr. High Honor Choirs, NCCC Honor Choir in Connecticut, and Equity & Justice Program with Kansas City Community ensembles in Missouri. She serves as a guest conductor for several All-State ensembles including upcoming festivals in Louisiana and California, and previously in Vermont and Oklahoma.

Dr. Barber has served as Choral Lecturer for the summer master’s program at Gordon College for the past 4 years. Teaching choruses in Choral Conducting and Choral Music Education. The program offers MME degree for current music education practitioners and has students from across New England.

She is also excited to announce the release of her upcoming books: A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context, and Linguistics. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021); and Practical Companion Guide on AAE Dialect for Singers. (Companion Text: A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context, and Linguistics. (New York: Amazon, 2021); both will be released Spring of 2021.

Dr. Barber holds a B.M. in Vocal Performance from Oral Roberts University, an M.M. in Music Education from Mansfield University, and a Ph.D. in Choral Music Education and Choral Conducting from The Florida State University.

Kathy Saltzman Romey is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota, where she oversees the graduate program in choral conducting and conducts choirs. She is also Artistic Director of the 200-voice symphonic chorus, The Minnesota Chorale, which serves as principal chorus for the Minnesota Orchestra. Known for her meticulous training of choirs, Romey has prepared the Chorale for performances with both the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra under the baton of such acclaimed conductors as James Conlon, Nicholas McGegan, Bobby McFerrin, Roger Norrington, Helmuth Rilling, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Osmo Vänskä, Edo de Waart, and Hugh Wolff. Romey has conducted the Chorale in regional, national and international forums and in performances with both the Minnesota Orchestra and Metropolitan Symphony. She also coordinates and presents the BRIDGES series, the nationally acclaimed education-outreach program of the Minnesota Chorale. Begun in 1994 to build musical and social bridges between diverse populations, BRIDGES is an annual initiative that harnesses the richness of global choral repertoire to engage cultural communities and raise awareness of pressing social needs. A passionate advocate of choral civic engagement, Romey documented the BRIDGES program in a co-authored chapter with two University of Minnesota conducting students for the book Wisdom, Wit and Will: Women Choral Conductors on Their Art, released by GIA Publications in 2009.

Romey has served as a staff member to the Oregon Bach Festival since 1984 and is principal chorus master of the 54-voice professional Festival Choir, which she prepares for annual Festival concerts, commissions, and recording projects. American and world premiere performances presented at the Oregon Bach Festival include major choral works by Tan Dun, Arvo Pärt, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sven David Sandström, and Mozart reconstructions by Robert Levin. Romey has assisted with ten recordings, including the Festival’s 2001 Grammy Award–winning CD of Penderecki’s Credo under the direction of Helmuth Rilling and the 2008 Grammy-Nominated CD of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Osmo Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra and Chorale.

Active as a guest conductor, chorus master, and clinician throughout the United States and Europe, Romey has regularly prepared ensembles with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart for special programs and tours in Germany, France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and the United States. Currently, she serves on the faculty of the Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble. This international choir and orchestra are assembled annually for the Stuttgart Bach Week, focusing on the study and presentation of major works by Johann Sebastian Bach. In addition to her work with the Bachakademie, Romey has prepared programs with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Netherlands Radio Choir, Carnegie Hall Festival Chorus, and Grant Park Music Festival. 2012 marked her second appearance with the Berkshire Choral Festival.

Romey earned a B.A. in Flute Performance from the University of Oregon in 1979, and an Artistic Degree in Choral Conducting under Helmuth Rilling from the Frankfurt Musikhochschule in 1984. She returned to the United States and served as Director of Choral Activities at Macalester College from 1985-1992. She joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1992 and was recognized in 2006 with the University’s Arthur Motley award for exemplary teaching. She was also honored by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association with the 2002 Conductor of the Year award.

Betsy Cook Weber (Choral Conducting, Division Head) is active internationally as a conductor, clinician, adjudicator, and lecturer. In the summer of 2013, Weber became the thirteenth person and first woman to receive the Texas Choral Director Association's coveted Texas Choirmaster Award. She is editor of the Betsy Cook Weber Choral Series with Alliance Music Publishing. Weber also serves as Director of the Houston Symphony Chorus, a post to which she was appointed in the Fall of 2014. In that role, she prepares choral-orchestral masterworks for some of the world's greatest conductors, including Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Christoph Eschenbach, and David Zinman. Choirs under Weber's direction, including the Moores School Concert Chorale, have been, or will be, featured at multiple state (TMEA 2002, 2005, 2008, 2013, 2017) and national conventions including the American Choral Directors Association national convention in Miami in 2007 and Minneapolis in 2017. Concert Chorale will also be a featured choir at the national convention of the National Collegiate Choral Organization in the fall of 2017. Internationally, Weber has led the Chorale to top prizes and acclaim at prestigious competitions in Wales, France and Germany, including a first-place finish as one of only ten choirs world-wide selected to compete in the famous International Chamber Choir Competition in Marktoberdorf, Germany. The Chorale also won first place in their primary division in the Grand Prix of Nations in Magdeburg, Germany in 2015. Weber has prepared singers for Da Camera, for early music orchestras Ars Lyrica and Mercury Houston, and is also routinely called upon to prepare singers for touring shows, including Josh Groban, NBC's Clash of the Choirs, Telemundo's Latin Grammys, Star Wars in Concert, Andreas Bocelli, Legends of Zelda, It's a Wonderful World, Dreamworks, and Final Fantasy. Before coming to the University of Houston, Weber taught vocal music (K-12) in the public schools. She holds degrees from the University of North Texas, Westminster Choir College, and the University of Houston

Dr. Amanda Quist is the Director of Choral Activities for the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Dr. Quist was previously Chair of the Conducting, Organ, and Sacred Music Department, and Associate Professor of Conducting at Westminster Choir College. Dr. Quist is the recipient of Westminster Choir College of Rider University’s 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2018 Mazzotti Award for Women’s Leadership, and she is the Carol F. Spinelli Conducting Fellow. Dr. Quist was recently invited to be a conductor for the ACDA International Exchange Program, clinician for the 2019 ASPIRE International Youth Music Festival in Australia, juror for the Penabur International Choir Festival in Indonesia, and clinician for the Interkultur International Choral Festival. Westminster Kantorei, winner of the 2018 American Prize in College & University Choral Performance, has performed at the American Choral Directors Association’s (ACDA) Eastern Division Conference, Boston Early Music Festival, American Handel Festival, and Interkultur. The choir recently released its first commercial recording, Lumina, distributed by Naxos, which was hailed by infodad.com as a recording “sung with great beauty of sound and excellent articulation-a CD to cherish” and by National Medal of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen as “superb, a splendid recording, highly recommended.” During her work with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Dr. Quist collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dresden Staatskapelle. She also serves as Chorus Master for the Philadelphia Orchestra Chorus. Dr. Quist’s role as Chorus Master for the premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Matsukaze at the Spoleto Festival USA and the Lincoln Center Festival garnered praise from The New York Times and Charleston City Paper, who described the chorus’ performance as “beautifully prepared, gripping,” a “gossamer web of voices” and “bridging the vocal and instrumental textures with perfect intonation.”

Dr. Quist was Director of the Westminster Vocal Institute, a highly regarded summer program for talented high school students, and Director of Choral Activities at San José State University. Her other honors include the James Mulholland National Choral Award and the Audrey Davidson Early Music Award. An active guest conductor and clinician, her recent and upcoming appearances include the NAfME All National Honor Choir, All State High School & Collegiate Honor Choirs throughout the country, and serving as a headliner for music conferences in the US and abroad. Dr. Quist is the National ACDA Repertoire & Resources Coordinator for Collegiate Activities, and her choral series is published through Walton Music.

Joan Catoni Conlon taught at the University of Washington and the University of Colorado, retiring after more than 45 years of teaching at many levels. In Seattle, she conducted the Northwest Chamber Chorus for 25 years, whose singers performed all the Telemann choral cantatas she transcribed for her doctoral work—bless them!—in addition to major works. As director of graduate choral research at Colorado she worked with talented students, and enjoyed watching their curiosity and interests expand.

In 2001, she published Performing Monteverdi: A Conductor’s Guide, pursuing an abiding interest in his outrageous daring. In 2009, she edited and contributed to Wisdom, Wit, and Will: Women Choral Conductors on Their Art (GIA), with colleagues Hilary Apfelstadt, Marguerite Brooks, Sharon Hansen, Ann Howard Jones, Doreen Rao, Kathy Romey, Harriet Simons, Beverly Taylor, Joan Whittemore, Lori Wiest, and Sue Williamson. On two sabbaticals, she studied Hindustani classical vocal music in India.

Interpreting choral music for diverse audiences in a way that is relevant to young people while maintaining the highest standards of music education and performance sums up the work of Robyn Reeves Lana. When not leading the Cincinnati Youth Choir, Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, over the last quarter of a century, Mrs. Lana has served as conductor and clinician across the United States and at internationally acclaimed venues such as The Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing), The World Expo (Milan), St. Peter’s Basilica (Vatican City), Minatomirai Hall (Yokohama). Internationally she has served as a clinician in Malacca, Malaysia; Singapore; Italy; Ireland; and China. Closer to home, she has been a featured guest conductor at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Cincinnati’s Music Hall. She has served as clinician or guest conducted state and regional choral events in over 25 states. Lana has served on the choral faculty at Xavier University and has been a guest professor in the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s choral department.

Lana is the editor of a choral series with Santa Barbara Music Publishing. Her book, Voices in Harmony, published in 2017, is a collaborative effort that celebrates many successful philosophies in choral education. She also is also published in Chorister Guild’s The Chorister, Chamber Music America’s CMA Matters, and ACDA’s Choral Journal for which she also served as guest editor of the of three issues.

Achieving an extensive list of orchestral and operatic repertoire for children and praise from collaborating conductors including Craig Hella Johnson, John Adams, Louis Langrée, John Morris Russell, Robert Porco, Marcus Huber, James Conlon, Earl Rivers and Mark Gibson among others, Lana regularly prepares her choirs for collaborations with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Pops, the Cincinnati May Festival, Cincinnati Opera, and CCM choirs and orchestras. She prepared CYC for two Telarc label recordings with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra under the direction of the late Maestro Erich Kunzel.

Nationally, Lana has served ACDA as Children’s Choir and Community Youth Repertoire and Standards Chair and currently is the Co-Chair for ACDA Advocacy and Collaboration. She is also honored to serve on the Chorus America Board of Directors.

Robyn Reeves Lana earned her bachelor and master of degrees in Music Education with a Cognate in Voice and a concentration in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She holds Level III Orff-Schulwerk Certification and has done focused study on children’s choirs at Butler University with Henry Leck.

Ms. Lana’s work has earned many awards including CCM’s Distinguished Alumna Award (2012), a gold medal in the World Choir Games (2012) placing first in the United States, the American Prize for Choral Performance (2015), the Chorus America ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming (2016), Chorus America Award for Education and Community Engagement (2018), and Cincinnati CityBeat’s Best Local Vocal Arts Group (2015 and 2017). Most recently she was celebrated in the book Imagineers • Impresarios • Inventors: Cincinnati’s Arts and the POWER OF HER which tells the inspiring stories of the formidable influence of women in the arts throughout Cincinnati’s dynamic history.

INTERNATIONAL-Aida Swenson is one of Indonesia’s strongest forces of choral music development. As founder and conductor of the Indonesian Children’s & Youth Choirs Cordana, who have gathered international recognitions and awards, and have been invited to perform in major cities world wide. As a graduate of the Westminster Choir College, Princeton, USA and as a sought after clinician, Aida Swenson conducts numerous workshops and adjudicates national and international events. As a jury member Aida attended choir festivals world wide among others in USA, Canada, England, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Argentina, China, Latvia, Riminni-Italy and Africa.

Aida has spent many years traveling through out provinces of Indonesia creating and leading choirs, giving master classes, and training choral conductors. However, her professional activities include: Council Member of the World Choir Games for Indonesia; Member of the Advisory to INTERKULTUR’s World Choir Games; Chairman of the National Foundation for the Development of Choral Musician Indonesia; Member of Advisory of the Foundation of Church Music (YAMUGER); Member of the committee Asia Pacific Choral Symposium- IFCM; Artistic Director of National Christian Student Choir Competition in Indonesia and other international choir competitions. Aida is featured in the “World Who is Who in Choral Music”. Her personal commitment to her musical endeavors in Indonesia is not only centered on her vision in furthering the quality of children’s choral development. Aida is a pillar of change, of progression, and of energy to achieve unassailable quality in choral musician Indonesia and internationally.

INTERNATIONAL-Karmina Šilec has brought freshness and originality to the world of vocal music, opening new spaces of expression, persuasiveness, intensity of experience, and communication. With “Choregie - vocal theatre” and its innovative interventions, she has opened wider artistic spaces and set trends towards complex multi-media events – productions performed on stages of festivals worldwide and broadcasted by the EBU and Eurovision. Each Choregie project signed by Karmina Šilec is an expedition into the field of the unknown and the unexplored. Artistically her projects are results of a thorough research of music, juxtapositioning different arts by merging the old and the contemporary, which creates new, exciting contexts. Within the uncompromising frame of the highest standards she continuously proves that vocal ensembles can be outstanding, versatile artistic bodies - superb instruments which are constantly opening up to new creative spaces. Her Choregie concept of vocal theatre was performed on stages worldwide – from Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall to the Theater Basel, Teresa Carreño Theatre in Caracas, and from Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Davis Symphony Hall San Francisco to Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Her company Carmina Slovenica has been invited to art events of the highest esteem such as the World Music Days (organized by the ISCM), Ruhrtrienalle, Festival d'Automne á Paris, Moscow Easter Festival, Operndage Rotterdam, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Melbourne Festival, the European Symposium on Choral Music (organized by the IFCM), Steirischer Herbst, Golden Mask Moscow, Holland festival, America Cantat, Prototype festival New York, etc. As conductor and director Karmina Šilec has projects with various companies and ensembles worldwide among them Theater Basel, SNG Opera Ljubljana, Radio Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Slovenian National Opera and Ballet Maribor, Slovenian National Project Choir, ensemble ¡Kebataola! and many others. Karmina Šilec has received more than 20 of the highest international awards and special recognitions, among them the award by the ITI – International Theatre Institute "Music Theatre Now" in the category Music beyond opera, Golden Mask, the prestigious International Robert Edler Prize for Choral Music for her exceptional contribution to the world choir movement, and the Prešeren Found Award. There are few artistic teams in Slovenia as widely recognized in the international arena as can undoubtedly be said for Karmina Šilec’s outstanding ensembles Carmina Slovenica and ¡Kebataola!, together with the movements she created. With her boldness, provocativeness and erudition Karmina Šilec transformed various ensembles into superior artistic formations of the highest rank. She expanded the field of choral, chamber and solo singing to reach unimaginable extensions of the most complex creative space of an all-encompassing multi-form work of art. Based on thorough research she created a whole range of conceptual, stylistically and thematically perfected projects, among them Ultimate Collective Experience, Placebo, Was haben si gegen Bauern, gnädige Frau?, From Time Immemorial, Toxic Psalms, Vampirabile, Spixody, Who would think that the snow falls, Vertical Thoughts, CS Light, Rusalke, Pleading for Words, and others.

INTERNATIONAL-Maria Elina Mayorga is the Director of the Arturo Beruti Choir since 1973. Between 1986 and 2017 he directed the Choir of the Catholic University of Cuyo. She was a Full Professor at the National University of San Juan. Until now, she has been developing an intense international activity as a panelist, jury, lecturer and guest director (Brazil, Chile, USA, Israel, Hungary, Mexico, etc.)

She is the founder and artistic director of the most important international choral events that take place in San Juan and that, with the support of the members of its choirs and the Government of San Juan, have positioned the province as a CHORAL POLE unparalleled in the rest of the country. Among them: San Juan Coral, international choir festival (founded in 1998), Ansilta, Contest and Choir Festival (founded in 2007), Sacred Music in San Juan, interreligious artistic encounter held in November 2012, Canto en Sol, festival for Children and Young Singers of America (founded in 2013), American Choral Forum (founded in 2015) and as of August 2016 presents a new choral project: SAN JUAN CANTA, INTERNATIONAL CHOIR CONTEST AND FESTIVAL. As Director of the Arturo Beruti Choir, she carries out an outstanding national and international activity. Among the most recent high-profile events, it is worth mentioning the concert tour to the People's Republic of China where they participated in four international choir festivals.

In November 2019, he went on a concert tour in Buenos Aires, with his successful concert in the Salón Dorado of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires occupying a very prominent place .During 2020, in times of pandemic, she has been summoned to speak at international symposia, cycles of invited professors at foreign universities, conferences and multiple activities related to the recognition of her career.

In 2001 the Sanjuanino Center for Culture declared her "Notable Personality 2001" . In October 2002 he received a distinction from the UPCN (Unión Personal Civil de la Nación) in recognition of his contribution to culture. In December 2003 he received a distinction from the Government of the Province of San Juan through the Undersecretariat of Culture, in recognition of his career. Identical distinctions have been received from the National Gendarmerie (2004), the Lions Club (2005) and the Municipality of Coquimbo and Casa de Chile in San Juan (2006). On March 8, 2007, on International Women's Day, she was declared "Illustrious Woman" by the Municipality of the City of San Juan.

INTERNATIONAL-Dr. Nuria Fernández Herranz obtained her degree in Choral Conducting and Conducting Pedagogy at the Dániel Berzsenyi Tanárkepzö Föiskola in Szombathely (Hungary) with the highest honours and simultaneously she studied Choral Conducting at the Ferenc Liszt High Academy of Music in Budapest. She has a PhD in Humanities from the Carlos III University of Madrid where she designs and manages choral projects which are points of reference within the Spanish choral scene: the University Choir, the Children Program of Scenic Music (1999-2008) and the Choral Conducting Course.

She has taught choral conducting in higher education for over twenty years and many choral conductors have studied with Nuria Fernández. She is currently a choral conducting lecturer at the High Conservatory of Music in Castilla-La Mancha. She develops different projects that have become models in the Spanish choir scene

She is also artistic director and founder of VokalArs, a renowned and prestigious choir in the current choral scene. This group is characterized by the novelty of its artistic proposals and a concept of timbered sonority with its own personality. Her choirs have won various prizes, as well as national and international recognition. She has performed multiple premieres of choral and scenic music in main concert halls and she is frequently invited as member of jury to national and international choral festivals. She is also regularly invited to lead different artistic projects in Spain and abroad.

March 8-Dr. Lynnel Joy Jenkins is Artistic Director of the Westrick Music Academy and choral teacher at the Timberlane Middle School of the Hopewell Valley Regional School District in Pennington, New Jersey. Dr. Jenkins’ varied conducting and teaching experience ranges from the elementary to collegiate level. Previous to these appointments, she served as Assistant Professor of Music Education at Westminster Choir College of Rider University and Conductor of the Resident Training Choir at the American Boychoir in Princeton, New Jersey. She has also served as Associate Music Director of the Temple University Children’s Choir in Temple University’s Music Preparatory Division and music specialist at the Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

Jenkins is a choral music educator of international stature, having lectured and conducted in China, Hong Kong, Iceland, South Africa and Switzerland. She has conducted honor choruses for one national, four divisional and several state conferences for the American Choral Directors Association, two national conferences for the Organization for American Kodály Teachers, numerous all-state choruses and choral festivals, and presented interest sessions and reading sessions for these professional music associations.

She has developed and implemented choral programs inspired by the pedagogy and philosophy of Kodály. Her approach to choral pedagogy is shared in a chapter she wrote for the “School Choral Program: Philosophy, Planning, Organizing, and Teaching” published by GIA. Jenkins has served on the teaching staff for Kodály Certification Programs at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas and Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.

Jenkins was inducted into the Music Education Alumni Hall of Fame and presented the Alumni Merit Award by Westminster Choir College for her contributions to the field of music education. She earned degrees from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (B.M.), Temple University (M.M.) and University of Arizona (D.M.A.), and at the first two institutions was awarded the Elaine Brown Conducting Award. She holds a certificate in Kodály pedagogy from Westminster Choir College of Rider University and level two Orff-Schulwerk certification.

Dr. Andrea Ramsey enjoys an international presence as a composer, conductor, scholar, and music educator. Her teaching experiences range from work with adolescent and children's voices to high school and collegiate voices. She enjoys regular opportunities to conduct all-state and divisional level honor choirs, festival events at Carnegie Hall, and serves as a principal conductor for the Pacific International Young Women's Choral Festival in Eugene, Oregon.

Before leaping into full time composing and guest conducting, Andrea held positions in music education and conducting at The Ohio State University and the University of Colorado, respectively. An ASCAPlus award-winning composer, Andrea believes strongly in the creation of new works. Her compositions are available with traditional publishers and also through MusicSpoke, a digital sheet music marketplace. She enjoys residency collaborations with ensembles and festival choirs, some of which have included: the Allegro Choirs of Kansas City, Ithaca College, and the Crescent City Choral Festival in New Orleans.

As a scholar, she has presented for state, divisional, and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the 6th Annual Symposium on Sociology in Music Education, as well as The Phenomenon Singing Symposium in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. She has co-authored articles published in the Choral Journal, as well as the Journal of Research in Music Education. A native of Arkansas, she has experienced in her own life the power of music to provide a sense of community, better understanding of our humanity, and rich opportunities for self-discovery.

Rebecca Rottsolk is the Artistic Director of RainShadow Chorale on the Olympic Peninsula. She served as artistic director for the Northwest Girlchoir from 1982 until 2001, building the Choir into one of the most respected youth choral organizations in America. Now retired, Rebecca frequently presents workshops on girls’ voices, conducting and rehearsal techniques, inspirational teaching and techniques for maximizing performance. She enjoys a national reputation as guest conductor and clinician, conducting many all-state and regional festival choruses including 2010 California Women’s All-State Choir, 2008 Indiana Women’s All-State Choir, 2007 Choral Perspectives, 2006 Colorado Women’s All-State Choir, 2006 NWACDA Children’s Honor Choir, 2006 Idaho All-State Children’s Choir, 2005 Texas MEA Women’s All-State Choir and the 2002 & 2004 Pacific International Children’s Choir Festivals.

Rottsolk adjudicates for Heritage Festivals and Worlds of Fun Festivals and edits a choral series for Alliance Music Publications. She currently conducts two adult community choirs on the Olympic Peninsula and is the director of Mirinesse Women’s Choir in Seattle. Mirinesse was honored to perform at the 2009 National ACDA Convention in Oklahoma City. Rebecca Rottsolk received her Bachelors of Music from St. Olaf College, her M.A. from Pacific Lutheran University, and her CME Artist-Teacher diploma in 1992. The 1997 recipient of the Washington ACDA Award for choral leadership, Ms. Rottsolk also served as National R&S chair for Children’s choirs from 1998-2004.

Tuesday March 9-Cheryl Dupont is the Artistic Director of the New Orleans Children's Chorus and Youth Chorale. Although she is known throughout the United States for her work with children's choirs, Cheryl is equally experienced at working with mixed choirs on the high school, college and adult levels. She previously taught at Benjamin Franklin High School for thirteen years and served as Interim Director of Choral Activities at the University of New Orleans for the 1999-2000 academic year. Mrs. Dupont has also served as an Instructor of Voice at the University of New Orleans, Womens' Chorus Director at Loyola University of the South, and as Associate Conductor of the Symphony Chorus of New Orleans. Other experience includes teaching and conducting on the elementary level and in churches. Her choirs have won numerous awards in music festivals throughout the South, and have appeared at state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (Savannah in 1992, Knoxville in 1994, and Orlando in 2000), the national convention of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators in 1998, and several times at Carnegie Hall. The New Orleans Children's Chorus toured Italy in the summer of 1996 under her direction and made their solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in June of 1997.

Mrs. Dupont is in demand as a guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator. She has conducted all-state choirs or other statewide festivals in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Kentucky and New Jersey, and conducts frequently in Louisiana, Florida and other southeastern states.

She holds the Bachelor of Music Education degree in Piano and Voice and the Master of Music Education degree in Conducting Performance, both from Loyola University of the South, and the Artist-Teacher Diploma from the Choral Music Experience Institute. She is now a Teaching Associate for the Choral Music Experience Institute, working in the field of advanced training of choral teacher/conductors. Cheryl is the director of the Choral Music Experience certification course held annually in North Carolina. In addition, she is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Crescent City Choral Festival, an annual choral festival for children throughout the United States, which is in its fifth successful year.

Mrs. Dupont has assumed many leadership roles on the district level of the Louisiana Music Educators Association. An active member of the American Choral Directors Association, she served from 1993- 1999 as Southern Division Repertoire and Standards Chairperson on the National Committee on Children's Choirs. She is the founder and chairperson of the Louisiana ACDA Elementary All-State Honor Chorus. Cheryl is a member of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators and was selected for inclusion in "Who's Who Among American Teachers." She presently serves as President of the Association for Choral Music Education.

Dr. Nicole Lamartine strives in every musical experience to illuminate meaning and impact of the commonalities of being human. She is passionate about creating innovative, engaging, diverse, and meaningful choral performances for ensemble members and audiences alike. As the Sorensen Director of Choral Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Lamartine conducts the flagship choir, UCSB Chamber Choir, integrates relevancy into graduate choral studies at the MM and DMA levels for 21st century conductors, and teaches studio conducting and voice.

As a clinician and guest conductor of three international honor choirs and nine All-State choirs, Dr. Lamartine seeks to positively impact the next generation of choral musicians all over the world. An avid champion for music education, she has headlined music conferences in the US and Hong Kong and is a recognized expert in females conducting male choirs, rehearsal technique, and anatomy and movement for conductors. Her YouTube channel, “The Choral Eye,” contains self-produced videos written as a resource for choral musicians and educators. Dr. Lamartine has had abundant opportunity to commission and premiere new works from leading composers. It is imperative to bring the experience to her students of bringing a new piece to life under the guidance of the living composer.

She conducts Chor Anno (Washington) providing choral music educators in the NW a creative outlet for ensemble singing. An active performer, she has sung professionally with Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and Colorado Bach Ensemble. As a voice teacher committed to building marketable skill, Dr. Lamartine’s students have been admitted to prestigious doctoral programs and sung on stages in Europe and the US. She is an active vocal adjudicator and has given masterclasses across the US.

Prior to joining the UCSB faculty, from 2008-2020 Dr. Lamartine was Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Wyoming where her choirs were honored to sing at several national and regional conferences and where she won the University of Wyoming’s highest teaching award, the Ellbogen Award for Meritorious Classroom Teaching. In service to the profession, Dr. Lamartine has served the American Choral Directors Association as President of the Northwestern region. She holds world, national, and state records in powerlifting, demonstrating that creativity is intertwined with strength of body and mind.

International Conducting: 2018 TAISM Honor Choir, Muscat, Oman, 2017 UW Collegiate Chorale in the Tolosa Choral Contest, Spain, 2017 AMIS Men’s Honor Choir, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2016 Visiting Conductor, Beijing Conservatory, China, 2014 DoDDS Mixed Honor Choir, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2014 Visiting Conductor, International Conductor Exchange Program, Beijing, China

Conference Headliner: 2020 Conference Headliner, AMIS Music Educators conference, Hong Kong, 2020 Washington Music Educators Association, Yakima

All-State and Regional Conducting: 2021 Idaho Mixed All-State Choir, 2020 Oregon Middle TB All-State Choir, 2019 Colorado Middle TB All-State Choir, 2018 Minnesota TTBB All-State Choir, 2017 Oregon Men’s All-State Choir, 2017 Alaska Mixed All-State Choir, 2016 Washington SSAA All-State Choir, 2016 Montana Mixed All-State Choir, 2014 NW ACDA Men’s Honor Choir, Seattle, 2014 Wyoming Mixed All-State Choir

Commissions and Premiers by: Craig Hella Johnson, Libby Larsen, Jennifer Higdon, Gerard Schwarz, Forrest Pierce, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Muehleisen, Karen Thomas

Conference performances with University of Wyoming Choirs: 2020, NW ACDA: Collegiate Chorale, 2017, NW NAfME: Collegiate Chorale, 2015, NW NAfME: The UW Singing Statesmen, 2012, NW ACDA: The UW Singing Statesmen, 2011, NCCO: Collegiate Chorale, 2011, NW NAfME: Collegiate Chorale

Research Interests: Anatomy and Physiology, Mental Focus, Rehearsal Technique, Females Conducting TTBB (Men’s) Choirs

Professional Singing: Conspirare, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Colorado Bach Ensemble

Service: President, NW American Choral Directors Association (2016-2018), President, Wyoming ACDA (2009-2013), National Board, National Collegiate Choral Organization

Kim Nazarian is a world renowned performing Grammy nominated jazz artist, educator and clinician. Besides her work as a sought-after solo vocalist, she has been performing all over the world with the vocal group “New York Voices“ (NYV) for more than 30 years. She is a jazz voice teacher via Skype for Vocal Jazz Majors at Ithaca College and she shares her perspectives on music and life as a musician through teaching private students in clinics, workshops, jazz camps and masterclasses, as well as through festival adjudication and guest conducting for singers on all levels in the US and abroad.

Nazarian was recognized as one of the top 50 most influential Armenian artists in 2012 and inducted into her High School’s Hall of Fame. She is the lead vocalist for the Latin influenced jazz ensemble “El Eco“, led by Argentinian drummer and composer Guillermo Nojechowicz, and sang as a guest vocalist on the latest CD of Gabriel Espinosa in 2018.

Besides many recordings of NYV, Kim Nazarian can be heard in many different projects as a soloist. In 2015 she released her solo CD entitled “Some Morning“ with remarkable guests including Paquito D’Rivera, Gary Burton, John Pizzarelli and Sean Jones. Her record was met with critical acclaim stating: “This set sets the gold standard for Jazz vocalists“ from Midwest Records, Chris Spector and Best Jazz Vocal CD 2015 from W. Royal Stokes, Jazz Historian and Critic.

Kim is proud to be one of the featured voices on Bobby McFerrin’s “VOCAbuLarieS“ CD that gathered three Grammy nominations. She also collaborated with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and the Manchester Craftman’s Guild on a concert tour dedicated to the late, great Ella Fitzgerald.

Nazarian’s work as a lyricist can be heard on the NYV CD’s and in other projects throughout the world, e.g. with Brazilian composer Ivan Lins and the Metropole Orchestra. Most notably, Nazarian wrote “World of Possibilities“, the title track to the accompanying CD of Bill Strickland’s best selling book “Making the Impossible Possible“.

Kim Nazarian is a dedicated teacher of vocal technique and the art of ensemble singing and a highly valued clinician at numerous vocal festivals, including all over Europe. She has been representing the USA as a judge for the International A Cappella Competition “vokal.total” in Graz, Austria since 2011 and was a member of the 2017 jury at Vocal Asia. Touring the globe over the last 30 years, Kim Nazarian has given concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, and at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, to name a select few. Furthermore, Kim has conducted several All State Choirs in the US for NY, Arizona, Colorado, Washington and Maine. Kim Nazarian is a magna cum laude graduate of Ithaca College and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. When not making music, she loves to be home in Oberlin, Ohio with her husband and son on her 6.5-acre farm…….cooking and gardening.

March 10-This season marks Elise Bradley’s eleventh year as Artistic Director of the 300-member Toronto Children’s Chorus. A passionate musician, award-winning conductor and educator, and internationally respected adjudicator and clinician, Ms. Bradley served for many years as the Head of Department, Music, at Westlake Girls’ High School in Auckland, New Zealand. She was also a soloist and member of New Zealand’s national Chamber Choir, Voices NZ.Since arriving in Toronto in 2007, Ms. Bradley has garnered praise for her artistry and for her deep commitment to children and the art of treble choral music. She has led the Chamber Choir on eight international tours – Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany (2009), Brazil and Argentina (2011), Sweden (2012), South Africa (2013), Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (2015), Boston and New York City (2016), Bahamas (2016) and Spain, to perform at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona (2017) – and three provincial tours: Ottawa (2012), Montreal and Ottawa (2013), and Halifax, Truro, and Amherst (2014). In late June 2018, she will travel with the Chamber Choir to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to perform once again at ‘Podium’, Choral Canada’s biennial national conference.

Under her direction, the choir’s latest CD, Sounzscapes: From Our Lands, was named ‘Outstanding Choral Recording’ by Choral Canada in 2014. She has also commissioned Canadian composers to write new works to be premiered by the Toronto Children’s Chorus and has prepared the Main Choir to perform as guests of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Youth Orchestra, Opera Atelier, the Bach Consort, Soundstreams, and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Ms. Bradley receives many invitations to work with choirs and present at conferences around the world, including Choralfest 2017 hosted by the Australian National Choral Association (Brisbane), Dozan wa Awtar children’s choir (Amman, Jordan), the inaugural New Zealand National Children’s Choir (Auckland), the IFCM World Choral Expo (Macau, China), Kokopelli Choirs (Edmonton, Alberta), and Gondwana Voices (Sydney, Australia). In August 2017, she was honoured to be invited by Choirs Ontario to serve as conductor the Ontario Youth Choir during its celebrated tour to Ottawa, Cobourg, and Toronto, and next March she looks forward to adjudicating and conducting choirs in Hong Kong.

Dr. Mary Hopper, Professor of Choral Music and Director of Performance Studies at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, conducts the Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club and the Women’s Chorale and is a frequent conductor for the Wheaton Opera production. Both of her choirs have appeared on ACDA conferences. The Women’s Chorale has been invited to sing at two National Conferences (Salt Lake City and New York City) and four Central Division Conferences. The Men’s Glee Club appeared on an Illinois ACDA State Fall Conference and Illinois Music Educator’s Conference under Dr. Hopper’s leadership.

Dr. Hopper is currently the National President for ACDA and was the conference chair for the ACDA 2015 National Conference in Salt Lake City. She has served ACDA on the state and division levels as Central Division Women’s Choir R & S Chair, Illinois State Treasurer, Illinois State President and Central Division President. Dr. Hopper holds degrees from Wheaton College and the University of Iowa, where she studied with Don V. Moses. Before coming to Wheaton, Dr. Hopper taught both junior high and high school choral music in the Chicago area and choral conducting and voice at the University of Minnesota (Morris).

Also an active church musician, she presently serves as Minister of Music at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Warrenville, IL. Most of Dr. Hopper’s research and publications have dealt with repertoire and women’s choirs. She co-authored the article “Teaching with Standards: Repertoire in the Age of Glee” published in the Choral Journal February 2011. She presented an interest session at the National ACDA Conference in 2011 titled “Expanding the Repertoire: Uncovering a Neglected American Music Genre: Black Composers Writing for Women’s Voices.” As a result of this research, the Wheaton College Women’s Chorale produced a recording of music for women’s voices by Black composers titled “Lead Gently, Lord.”

Dr. Hopper has contributed a chapter on “Community in Women’s Choirs” to Conducting Women’s Choirs: Strategies for Success published by GIA. She has been honored by Wheaton College with a Senior Teaching Achievement Award and the Distinguished Service of Alma Mater Award. In 2014 Illinois ACDA awarded Dr. Hopper the Harold A. Decker Award in recognition and appreciation of the significant contribution she has made to choral music.

Dr. Pamela Elrod Huffman’s conducting career spans all levels – from elementary and secondary schools to university, symphonic, and church choirs – and has included positions in Texas, New York, Illinois and Georgia. Since 2007, Dr. Huffman has served as the director of choral activities at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where she oversees the M.M. Choral Conducting program and directs the University’s choral ensembles.

An accomplished vocalist, Huffman has appeared as a guest artist with numerous university, professional, community and church choirs throughout the country. From 1988 until 1999, she sang with the late Robert Shaw, performing and recording with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, the Robert Shaw Choral Institutes, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus. Since 2003 she has been a member of the Grammy Award-winning professional choral ensemble, Conspirare, under the direction of Craig Hella Johnson.

Huffman regularly serves as a choral clinician and adjudicator in Texas and throughout the United States. In addition, she is a sought-after workshop clinician, particularly in the area of the choral techniques of Robert Shaw. Her articles on Shaw’s warm-ups and rehearsal techniques can be found on the website dedicated to the late maestro, http://robertshaw.website/yyy Huffman holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Texas at Austin and a D.M.A. in choral conducting from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She is a member of TCDA, TMEA, ACDA, NCCO, Chorus America and Pi Kappa Lambda, and is Past President of TCDA.

Education: D.M.A. in Choral Conducting, University of Illinois, 2001, M.M. in Choral Conducting, University of Texas at Austin, 1982, B.M. in Music Education, University of Texas at Austin, 1979

Research: Hull House Music School; Eleanor Smith (composer, music educator); Chicago choral music, 19th and early 20th centuries; Robert Shaw rehearsal techniques

Professional Experience: Over 30 years of conducting and teaching experience at all academic levels; professional singer

Teaching: Meadows Chorale; Meadows Concert Choir; Diva Dolce; graduate choral conducting; graduate choral literature; graduate choral techniques

Publications: Essential Building Blocks: The Rehearsal Techniques of Robert Shaw, The Choral Warm-ups of Robert Shaw

March 11-Dr. Zanaida Stewart Robles is a fierce advocate for diversity and inclusion in music education and performance. Authentic interpersonal connection and relationship-building are core principles of her teaching and performance methods. Born, raised, and educated in Southern California, she is in demand as a vocalist, conductor, clinician and adjudicator for competitions, festivals, and conferences related to choral and solo vocal music. She serves on the national

board of the National Association of Negro Musicians and is chair of the board of directors of Tonality, a non-profit organization that promotes peace, unity, and social justice through choral music performance in Los Angeles. Zanaida holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the USC Thornton School of Music, a Master of Music degree from CSU Northridge, a Bachelor of Music degree from CSU Long Beach, and she is a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

As a performing arts instructor at Harvard-Westlake Upper School in Studio City, CA, Dr. Robles conducts the Chamber Singers, Jazz Singers, Bel Canto Treble Choir, and Wolverine Chorus for tenors and basses. She is also the director of music at Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, CA where she oversees the Neighborhood Chorus, Neighborhood Bells, and the new Neighborhood Youth Choir. Dr. Robles served for 5 years as music director for “Project Messiah” with Street Symphony – an organization that engages communities directly affected by homelessness and incarceration in LA County through performances, workshops and teaching artistry. While studying at the University of Southern California (USC), she conducted the USC Thornton University Chorus for two years. Prior to this, she worked at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) for 7 years where she was the director of classical choirs and taught vocal fundamentals, sight singing, and music theory. Under her direction, the LACHSA Classical Choirs performed for numerous festivals, concerts, and special events at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and in other venues throughout Southern California.

As a concert soprano soloist, studio vocalist for film and television, and professional ensemble singer, Dr. Robles has sung throughout the United States, and in parts of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Her film, television, and video game credits include “Glee,” “Tinkerbell: Pirate Fairy,” “Godzilla,” “Minions,” “Creed,” Lego Movie,” “Despicable Me 3,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Venom,” “Smallfoot,” “Frozen 2,” “Underwater,” “Mulan,” and “Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War.”

Dr. Mary Breden is Professor Emeritus of Music at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A member of the music faculty at LMU since 1992, Breden has also taught in both the choral and music education programs at San Jose State University and The University of Texas at Austin.

At Loyola Marymount, Breden served as department chair from 1994-2014. As supervisor of the Choral Conducting Concentration, she has taught such courses as Choral Conducting and Choral Methods. Under her leadership the LMU Concert Choir, Women's Chorus, and Consort Singers have appeared in a variety of venues throughout California, as well as New York City, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Tucson and Phoenix. The ensembles have also appeared at ACDA Western Division Conventions, toured with Michael Crawford and appeared with him on his PBS special Michael Crawford... Music of the Night. Internationally, Breden has conducted the LMU Choruses in concerts throughout Italy, Germany, Austria, and France, and she has appeared as a guest conductor in Brussels, Belgium.

Active as a choral clinician, adjudicator and guest conductor, Breden is a Past President of the Western Division of the American Choral Directors Association. She has volunteered on the Education and Community Outreach Committee for the Los Angeles Master Chorale and is a member of the Southern California Vocal Association, the National Collegiate Choral Organization, and the International Federation of Choral Music. She has articles and choral reviews published in The Choral Journal, professional publication of the American Choral Directors Association.

Mary Breden received her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Choral Music from Arizona State University where she studied conducting with Douglas McEwen. Her undergraduate studies began at the Munich, Germany campus of the University of Maryland, with private piano studies in Munich and in Wiesbaden at the Wiesbadener Konservatorium. She completed the B.A. and B.M. degrees in piano performance at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles where she studied conducting with Paul Salamunovich, and was, for several years, his accompanist with the choruses at Mount St. Mary's, Loyola University, and Loyola Marymount University.

Sarah Elizabeth Charles is a vocalist/composer based in New York City. She has worked and studied with artists such as Christian Scott, George Cables, Geri Allen, Nicholas Payton and Sheila Jordan and has released three critically acclaimed albums with her band, SCOPE between 2012 and today. As the active vocalist in a number of bands (including SCOPE, Ajoyo, duo with Jarrett Cherner, Jesse Fischer's projects and Transient Beings) Charles has performed at many venues throughout her career. These have included The White House, Carnegie Hall, the first annual Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi, The Kennedy Center, the Rose Theatre with Jazz at Lincoln Center and many more. She has also had a commissioned composition performed at The National Gallery in Washington D.C. via The Canales Project "Hear Her Song" initiative.

In addition to her performances, Charles is an active educator as well. She works as a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility and Future Music Project youth workshops, has a private lessons studio in New York City, is an adjunct professor at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music teaching a course she designed called "Jazz and Gender" and has developed an early childhood music education program with Rise2Shine, a non-profit organization based in Fond Parisien, Haiti. In 2019, she was one of five recipients of the Yale School of Music's Distinguished Teaching Artist Award. In 2020, she was selected to be one of five members of the Joe's Pub Working Group, as a recipient of the New York City Women's Fund grant in support of her band's fourth album to be released in 2021 and as a recipient of Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works grant.

Charles' musical output has been described as a “genre of one” (DownBeat Magazine), “soulfully articulate” (NY Times) and “an unmatched sound” (Jay Z’s Life+Times). Her critically acclaimed sophomore project, “Inner Dialogue”, released in 2015 on Truth Revolution Records, features her band along with co-producer/special guest Christian Scott. Her third album, "Free of Form" is now available everywhere on Ropeadope/Stretch Music and features SCOPE as well as Scott as co-producer/special guest. One can only look to the future for more unique and boundary pushing music from this one of a kind artist.

Friday March 12-Mollie Stone serves as Choral Conductor and Lecturer at the University of Chicago, Co-Director of Chicago World Music Chorus (www.chicagoworldmusic.org), Co-Director of the Augsburg / Twin Cities Global Harmony Choir, and as a teacher for Village Harmony (www.villageharmony.org).

Stone lectures and gives workshops on Black South African choral music, working to promote the work of Black South African composers, conductors and choirs. Stone strives to teach singers how to create more informed and authentic performances of Black South African traditional folk songs, political songs, religious songs, and songs that address the struggle against HIV / AIDS.

Stone created the teaching DVD/Booklet Vela Vela, and, along with partner, Patty Cuyler, the Raising the Bar series, which consists of teaching tools to help musicians learn to perform choral traditions from South Africa, the Republic of Georgia, and Bulgaria, more authentically.

In Vela Vela, viewers can hear each song performed, learn individual voice-parts, dance movements, pronunciation, and background information directly from South African singers. There are also interviews in which South African singers talk about the power of music in their lives. In the Raising the Bar series, Stone and Cuyler show how high foreigners can raise the bar in their performances of music from other cultures with coaching from master teachers, Matlakala Bopape. from South Africa, Shergil Pirtskhelani of The Republic of Georgia, and Elitsa Stoyneva of Bulgaria

Dr. Mihoko Tsutsumi is a native of Japan. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music as a voice performance major. In 1989, Dr. Tsutsumi moved to Montreal, Canada and studied English and voice at McGill University for two years. She then relocated back to Japan in 1991. In 2000, Dr. Tsutsumi traveled overseas to the United States to receive her Master’s in Music Education at Columbus State University in Georgia.

She then traveled to Florida in 2004 to complete her Master’s Degree in Choral Conducting at Florida State University; as well as her Ph.D. in Music Education with an emphasis in Choral Conducting under the direction of Dr. Andre Thomas. After obtaining her Ph.D. in summer of 2007 at Florida State University, Dr. Tsutsumi joined the faculty of the University of Florida as the director of the Men’s Glee and Women’s Chorale, and supervisor of the Gospel Choir; as well as teaching conducting. Dr. Tsutsumi was also the conductor of the Chancel Choir and Orchestra at the Trinity United Methodist Church of Gainesville.

Dr. Tsutsumi joined the faculty of SUNY Oswego in fall 2013. She has been directing Festival Chorus, State Singers, Women’s College Chorus, and Opera Chorus and teaching applied voice lessons and choral conducting. She is the only Japanese female choral conductor who holds Ph.D. in Choral Music and conducting choirs in the United States. Therefore, I have been invited to give lectures about Japanese Choral music.

She will be visiting the Westfield University, MA on April 6th to give an interest session about Japanese Choral Music.

She started teaching a GLS100 class from this semester and took the students to Japan during the spring break. She is planning to keep doing this every year. She is not only a choral conductor but also a vocal coach and piano accompanist.

Dr. Cara Tasher has served as Director of Choral Studies at the University of North Florida since 2006. She conducts the Chamber Singers, alternates conducting Osprey Treble Chorus and Chorale; teaches the choral conducting curriculum; oversees the Jacksonville SINGS! Initiatives including the Choral Invitational, Summer UNF Conductor’s Studio, Summer Vocal Artists, Refugee Chorus; and oversees the choral program and its leadership team. At UNF, she was awarded the 2010 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, the 2016 Outstanding International Leadership Award, and in 2019, received a faculty scholarship grant for her work with the Jacksonville SINGS! Refugee Chorus and inclusion training. In addition to her work at UNF, she collaborates frequently as Director Huesped with the Opera de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and guest conducts around the globe. She has performed and recorded with conductors Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Robert Shaw and Sir Georg Solti. Tasher has been professionally associated with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Conspirare, Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Portugal's Vocalizze Festival, Trinity Choir-Wall Street, Xavier University, and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Her training took place in the Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus, at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, University of Texas at Austin, Paris IV-La Sorbonne, and Northwestern University. Dr. Tasher is highly active within the American Choral Directors Association, International Federation of Choral Music, and the National Collegiate Choral Organization in various leadership capacities. Proficient in several languages, Tasher's engagements as singer, conductor, master teacher, and adjudicator, have brought her to over ten states and twenty countries for concerts, competitions, festivals, and workshops. Global and cultural competency is a focal point of Tasher’s teaching, and in addition to performing a wide variety of repertoire in many languages, she tours internationally with her choral ensembles on a regular basis to provide international exchange opportunities.

March 13-Dr. Lori Hetzel is the Associate Director of Choral Activities, Associate Director of the School of Music, and professor of Choral Music Education at the University of Kentucky where she conducts the UK Women’s Choir and the ever-popular a cappella group “Paws and Listen”.

In addition to her conducting duties, Dr. Hetzel supervises student teachers and teaches undergraduate methods and choral conducting courses where she has pioneered a unique partnership program with area high schools allowing undergraduate students to begin classroom teaching early in their curriculum and gain true “hands on” experience. Hetzel is a contributing author to the new textbook Conducting Women’s Choirs: Strategies for Success.

Among her many academic accomplishments, she was the recipient of the University of Kentucky “Great Teacher of the Year” award in 2000, a finalist for the Provost Awards for Outstanding Teaching in both 2009 and 2010, and the winner of the Robert K. Baar Choral Award in 2011 – “given to one choral director in the state who exhibits outstanding leadership in choral music and promotes music education in the state of Kentucky.” Lori Hetzel received the Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Wisconsin/Green Bay, the Master of Music from the University of Missouri/Kansas City and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Michigan State University.

Outside of the university, Dr. Hetzel serves as Artistic Director of the Lexington Singers Children’s Choir and conducts the LSCC Chamber Choir. The Lexington Singers Children’s Choir was formed to provide specialized choral opportunities for the children of central Kentucky and now offers four select choirs in which children can participate. The group performs not only in the greater Lexington area but has also presented concerts with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir - Kantorie, the Spivey Hall Children’s Choir (Atlanta), the Central Illinois Children’s Choir, and at the Kennedy Center as part of the “Our Lincoln” concert presented by the Kentucky Arts Council. They are often seen in collaboration with other area musical groups including the Lexington Singers, Lexington Philharmonic, UK Opera Theater and the UK Choirs.

Hetzel is serving her second term as Repertoire and Standards Chair for Women’s Choirs, ACDA Southern Division.

Award-winning composer and singer Mari Esabel Valverde (b. 1987) has been commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association, Texas Music Educators Association, Seattle Men’s and Women’s Choruses, and Boston Choral Ensemble among others and has appeared with Dallas Chamber Choir, Vox Humana, and EXIGENCE (Detroit). She was a featured composer at the 2016 Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses Festival, where her “Our Phoenix” was premièred by six collective ensembles from the United States and Canada. Her works are published by earthsongs and Walton Music and self-published.

Fluent in Spanish and French, she actively studies Brazilian Portuguese and Swedish. She has translated numerous vocal works and documents including a phonetic guide of Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Based in North Texas, she taught voice at the high school level for over six years. Her former students have participated in All-State Choirs and State Solo Competition. She currently teaches singing and transgender voice training with TruVoice Lessons. She holds degrees from St. Olaf College, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, France, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is a member of the American Choral Directors Association, the American Composers Forum, and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

RESIDENCIES:

• Artist-in-Residence, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, March 2019-workshopped the tenor-bass choir on an original work; visited with students in the “Music, Gender, and Sexuality” and “Choral Literature” courses; presented “Believe My Story: An Intersectional Talk on Consent and Shame”; was interviewed in a “Community Conversation on Trans Identity”; met with wellness peer educators and Sexual Assault Resource Network student advocates for an informal training on transgender health; and performed “Transvocality: An Exposé of My Musical Journey,” a half-voice, half-composition recital.

• Featured Guest-Presenter, Transgender Voices Festival, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2018-taught private voice lessons to transgender and non-binary singers; presented “Expanding Definitions of ‘Woman’: Singing Authentically” and instructed transgender women in speech and singing in an open voice coaching; and sang a classical set in an all-transgender cabaret

• Artist-in-Residence, West Valley College, Saratoga, California, October 2017-workshopped mixed choir on an original work; clinician for chamber singers; assisted in music theory and musicianship courses; spoke to music majors on the profession; and led a “campus conversation” on social justice, privilege, and intersectionality

• Artist-in-Residence, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, November 2015-workshopped mixed and women’s choruses on three original works; led a voice masterclass for two studios; taught private voice and composition lessons; and led formal discussions on LGBTQ-related professional and social justice matters.

Sophia Papoulis serves as Associate Conductor for the award-winning Young People's Chorus of New York City, and has conducted choruses in a number of the city's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, and Symphony Space.

Sophia has prepared choruses for national and international radio and TV appearances, recording sessions, collaborative performances with such artists as the New York Pops, Meredith Monk, and the Kronos Quartet, and for performances not only in NYC, but also in major venues throughout North America, Asia, Europe, and South America.

In addition to her work at YPC, Sophia is the Creative Director for the Foundation for Small Voices (FSV), bringing choral, songwriting, and mentorship programs to children nationally and internationally. Together with her husband Jim Papoulis, composer and FSV founder, she aligns her passion for sparking joyful musical experiences with Jim's founding vision of providing access to these artistic endeavors to young people from all walks of life. Together they travel and work with young people and choral educators alike, sharing their combined, ever-evolving knowledge in creation, composition, world music, pedagogy, curriculum, and conducting.

Dr. Pamela J. Perry is Professor of Choral Music Education, Emeritus at Central Connecticut State University where she was on the faculty from 1990-2013. She was the founding director of the CCSU University Singers. This ensemble has given concert tours in Germany, Hungary, France, Spain, Puerto Rico, China and Japan, and frequently performs and lead in master classes at MENC and ACDA conferences. Before coming to CCSU, Dr. Perry was the Director of Choral Activities at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. She is a frequent guest conductor at regional and all-state choral festivals, and serves as an adjudicator and clinician through the country.

As a music educator Dr. Perry is active as a consultant in many public school systems – working with music faculty on professional development topics, and working with school choral groups. She has been an education consultant for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and for the Orange County Public Schools in Orland, FL. Dr. Perry has published articles on choral music education in the Choral Journal and International Journal of Women Composers.

She has been the recipient of several teaching awards, most notably the Connecticut ACDA “Conductor of the Year” in 1994, membership to the “Excellence in Teaching” Honor Roll at CCSU in 1996, 2007, and 2008, and received the CCSU Distinguished Service Award in 2006.

Dr. Perry attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois for her undergraduate degree in music education. She holds a Master of Science in Music Education from the University of Illinois, and a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the Hartt School, Hartford, CT.

Marianna Parnas-Simpson graduated with a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Russia. She founded the award-winning St. Petersburg Girls’ Choir, KAMERTON, which she directed for ten years before coming to the United States.

Since 1999 Ms. Simpson has taught at Parker Elementary School, a Houston ISD magnet school for music. In 2005, she was named Teacher of the Year by her fellow teachers at Parker Elementary. In 2006, Marianna founded Treble Choir of Houston, a youth choral ensemble. Her choirs have been selected to perform at Carnegie Hall, TMEA, OAKE and National ACDA multiple times. She has conducted numerous children’s chorus festivals and workshops in the United States and internationally. From 2008 to 2010 Ms. Simpson served as the Artistic Director of the summer program for the American Boychoir in Princeton, NJ. Her latest international engagement was conducting several children’s choruses in Shanghai, China. Additionally, Marianna is a founding member of the highly acclaimed professional choral ensemble, Houston Chamber Choir.

A native of Hong Kong, Dr. Jenny Wong is currently the Associate Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In addition to the regular season, Wong has conducted performances of Peter Sellars’ staging of di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia, the Festival Internacionale Cervantino and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, and in the United States. As chorus master, Wong has prepared choruses for Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki, Eric Whitacre, María Guinand, and Music Academy of the West, including the U.S. premier of Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion. Most recently, Wong was Assistant Producer of the Master Chorale’s latest album, Eric Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil with Signum Classics.

This season, Wong will be conducting Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar with Long Beach Opera, in collaboration with WildUp. Other recent engagements and positions have included the Grammy-winning ensemble Phoenix Chorale in Phoenix, Arizona, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, new opera Sweet Land by Du Yun and Raven Chacon with opera company The Industry, directed by Yuval Sharon and Cannupa Hanska-Luger, as well as the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music, where she prepared choruses for the Stockton Symphony, and All Saints Church Pasadena, California.

Wong won two consecutive World Champion titles at the World Choir Games (China, 2010) and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition (Germany, 2011), conducting the Diocesan Girls' School Choir from Hong Kong. She has been a conducting fellow for the Oregon Bach Festival, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Distinguished Concerts International New York and Hong Kong SingFest, by which she conducted the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra. In Hong Kong, Wong founded and directed her own female youth chorus, Flow Women’s Voices in 2012.

Wong received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music from the University of Southern California, where she also taught choral conducting, was conductor of the USC Apollo Men’s Choir, and assistant conductor of the Donald Brinegar Singers. She earned her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has given lectures on Chinese choral music and is an active clinician for choirs. As a singer, Wong sang back-up for Elton John at the 2013 Emmy Awards and for Barry Manilow.

POSITIONS

2020 - present, Associate Artistic Director, Los Angeles Master Chorale, 2017 - present, Associate Conductor, Los Angeles Master Chorale, 2019, Interim Artistic Director of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, 2016 - 2017, Assistant Conductor, Los Angeles Master Chorale, 2017 - 2018, Interim Choirmaster, All Saints Church, Pasadena, 2015 - 2016, Visiting Instructor of Choral Activities, University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music, 2012 - Present, Founder and Director, Flow Women's Voices, Hong Kong, 2014-2015, Teaching Assistant, University of Southern California, 2012-2013, Assistant Conductor, University of Southern California Apollo Men's Chorus, 2012-2013, Assistant Conductor, Don Brinegar Singers, 2009-2011, Music Director, Diocesan Girls' School, Hong Kong.

Dr. Betsy Burleigh is the Thomas R. Kasdorf Professor of Choral Conducting and chair of the Choral Conducting Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Equally at home in the professional world and in academia, Burleigh served as music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh for 10 years. She led the Mendelssohn in performances of Brahms’ Requiem, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, and Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, and prepared the choir for numerous performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) and Manfred Honeck.

As a guest conductor, Burleigh has led the PSO, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Akron Symphony, Canton Symphony, and Handel Society of Dartmouth College. In 2016, she prepared the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, and, in 2012, she prepared the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus for performances at the World Choir Games with the Cincinnati Pops.

No stranger to the world of opera, Burleigh spent four years as chorus master for Cleveland Opera, where she served as music director for A Little Night Music. She also conducted the Cleveland Public Theater’s production of Ulmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis. During the course of her professional life, Burleigh has served as assistant director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra, where she prepared the chorus for all summer performances at the Blossom Festival, coached German and French diction, and oversaw the chorus for the Deutsche Grammophone recording sessions of Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, Pierre Boulez conductor. Other positions have included directing Boston’s Chorus pro Musica, the Providence Singers (RI), Akron Symphony Chorus, Canton Symphony Chorus (OH), and the Mastersingers of Lexington (MA).

Burleigh’s academic life has included teaching at Tufts University, Clark University, Longy School of Music, Southeastern Massachusetts University (now University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as Cleveland State University, where she achieved the rank of full professor.

Acclaimed for her oratorio conducting, Burleigh’s Chorus pro Musica performance of Haydn’s Creation was praised in The Boston Globe as an “expansive, poetic reading” and in the Boston Phoenix as “a stirring and elegant, lilting and expansive performance.” Her rendition of Orff’s Carmina Burana was called both “nuanced” and “hair-raising” by The Boston Musical Intelligencer. She won the 2000 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for best classical/opera performance for Ulmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis and conducted The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy Award–winning concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

Burleigh earned a Bachelor of Music Education degree with distinction from Indiana University, a Master of Music in Choral Conducting degree with distinction from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University.

Dr. Lisa A. Billingham, Professor of Choral Music Education at George Mason University, conducts the University Chorale and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in choral music education. Under her direction, the University Chorale was honored to accept an invitation in Fall 2009 to perform for the Virginia Music Educators Conference. The University Chorale often performs with the Mason Symphony Orchestra and the University Singers. Members of the University Chorale toured Nairobi, Kenya in March 2019 and performed with Dr. Billingham for her Carnegie Hall Debut in May 2019.

She is the advisor for the GMU student chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). She is the Past-President for the Virginia State Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association and is a planning committee member and campus liaison for the Annual Voices United Conference hosted by VA, MD-DC and DE chapters of ACDA . She was the National Chair for Communication and Education for ACDA. She is also an active member of the Faculty Senate.

Dr. Billingham’s research interests include the incorporation of Laban Movement Theory in conducting pedagogy and the choral rehearsal. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst from the Integrated Movement Studies Program at the University of Utah and incorporates that theory with her private conducting students. Dr. Billingham is active as a clinician for conferences and choirs throughout the United States and Europe. She has presented for ACDA, VMEA, three Regional ACDA conferences and at the International Society for Music Education (ISME) Conference in Bologna, Italy and Porto Alegre Brazil. Her text The Complete Conductors Guide to Laban Movement Theory is available from GIA Publications.

Dr. Billingham holds a DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Arizona, an MM in Choral Conducting from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and a BME in Choral Music Education from Indiana University (Bloomington). Her conducting mentors include Bruce Chamberlain, Eph Ehly, James Jordan, Maurice Skones and Volker Hempfling.

Deborah A. Mello, founding director of the Children’s Chorus of Sussex County, is the recipient of the Master Teacher Award from the New Jersey Music Education Association, the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Arts in Education, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Master Teacher Collaborative Award, sponsored by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. In May 2007, Debbie was one of fifty music educators in the United States to receive the inaugural Distinguished Music Educator Award from Yale University.

As a member of the American Choral Directors Association, Debbie has served on the Repertoire & Standards Committee for Children’s Choirs as New Jersey State Chair, Eastern Division Chair and National Chair. She currently serves as Membership Chair for the New Jersey ACDA State Board. A recipient of the Artist Teacher certificate from the Choral Music Education courses founded by Doreen Rao, Deborah has been a Teaching Associate in the CME courses taught in the United States, Canada, and in Europe, including England, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

She has conducted several All-State and Honor choirs in various states including New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky. Debbie was the guest conductor of the 2018 Music Fest, sponsored by the Portland Girlchoir with invited choirs in Portland, Oregon. Most recently, she was guest conductor for Virginia District 13 Middle School Honor Choir. In addition to conducting, Deborah has presented numerous workshops on elementary music education, music curriculum, children’s choirs, choral repertoire, and choral conducting for the New Jersey Music Educators, New York American Choral Directors Association, Massachusetts Choral Directors Association, Louisiana Choral Directors Association, National Association for Music Education (NAfME), National American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and Oberlin Conservatory. She was a featured presenter at the ACDA National Conference in Kansas City, Missouri this past February.

In collaboration with New Jersey composer, Jill Gallina, Debbie has written All-American Sing-Along Songs, a collection of patriotic songs and companion lesson plans, and For the Boys, a collection of songs that boys love to sing with background information and companion lesson plans. She has authored articles published in the New Jersey Music Educators Journal, the Eastern Division American Choral Directors Newsletter, and has an article coming out in the 2019 June/July ACDA Choral Journal.

After thirty-two years of teaching public school, Deborah retired as Director of Choral Activities at Randolph High School in Randolph, New Jersey. Currently, Deborah serves on the faculty of Montclair State University in the choral music education program. Debbie often teaches summer sessions and most recently was the featured headliner along with Paul Rardin at the 2018 Gordon College Summer Workshop in Massachusetts. In addition to teaching, she serves as the Junior Choir Director at Christ Episcopal Church in Newton, New Jersey.

Dr. Kelly A. Miller is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music Education at the University of Central Florida where she conducts the SoAl (Women’s) Chorus, SoAl (Women’s) Ensemble, and TeBa (Men’s) Chorus. She has taught introduction to music education, secondary choral methods I and II, music learning theory and assessment, conducting, music and the student with exceptionalities, conducting, and graduate classes in music education, while coordinating and supervising student teachers through their junior and senior internships. Prior to her appointment at UCF, Miller taught at Western Illinois University as Assistant Professor of Choral Music Education, where she conducted the Concert Choir and Vocal Jazz Ensemble. She conducted the Women’s Glee Club at Michigan State University for three years and taught choral music at the high school level for thirteen years in Michigan, Florida, and Nebraska. While in Orlando, Dr. Miller founded the choral/vocal program at Timber Creek High School, served as District 8 Chair for the Florida Vocal Association, and received her National Board Certification in secondary choral music. Before directing choirs, Miller was a concert band director for grades five through twelve, instructing marching band, jazz bands, music theory, and a little elementary general music in Nebraska.

In addition to her choral directing and teaching, Dr. Miller has maintained a private voice studio and is in demand to lead choral workshops on leadership and communication, the choral/instrumental director as voice teacher, choosing choral repertoire and running effective rehearsals, restorative practices for the choral conductor/teacher, creating artistry, student ownership, and team building. Dr. Miller frequently serves as a clinician and festival adjudicator. She has been invited to conduct regional and state honor choirs and present conference sessions in Ireland, Hawaii, West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Florida, and Michigan. Dr. Miller has performed at state, divisional, and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and at the Nebraska Music Educators Association Convention. She is currently a member of the professional women’s ensemble, mirabai and the semi-professional mixed choir, Voci del Cuore, and she is presently serving as the President-Elect of the Florida ACDA.

Miller holds the D.M.A. degree in choral conducting from Michigan State University, the M.M. degree in music education from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the B.A. degree in music education from the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

March 16-Dr. Therees Tkach Hibbard serves as the director of the Manitou Singers and St. Olaf Chamber Singers. She is presently an Associate Professor of Music at St. Olaf College where she teaches choral conducting, choral literature, and voice. She holds a bachelor of music honors degree in voice and music education from Longwood University, Virginia; a master of music degree in voice and choral conducting from Colorado State University; and a doctor of musical arts degree in choral conducting and vocal music education from the University of Oregon School of Music. She has conducted choirs ranging from young children to professional singers; and has served as adjudicator, workshop leader, and guest conductor for numerous choral organizations throughout Great Britain, Europe and North America; as well as Greece, Hong Kong and Muscat, Oman. Dr. Hibbard has worked as a choral conductor, singing tutor and senior lecturer at several United Kingdom colleges and universities in the London area including the London College of Music, the Royal College of Music Junior Department, and Roehampton University where she served as Programme Convener for the M.A. in choral music education, establishing the first BBC Singers Conducting Master Class Residency program. She has also served as a tutor for the Choral Conductors Training Course for the Association of British Choral Directors that she helped develop and implement throughout the United Kingdom. Dr. Hibbard was the artistic director of the Choir and Chamber Choir of the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London; both non-audition ensembles made up of students, faculty, staff, and alumni who presented three major choral/orchestral concerts each year. Highlight performances have included the Bach “St. John Passion” and B Minor Mass, Requiems of Brahms, Mozart, and Verdi, Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, and Fanshawe’s African Sanctus, as well as premiering a variety of new compositions and chamber works during her eight years of tenure with the choirs.

Her work as a movement specialist in the training of choral singers has created unique opportunities for her to work with choirs and conductors from around the world. Her research on enhancing choral performance through movement training has led to the development of a comprehensive choral education philosophy, most clearly demonstrated through her work with a broad range of vocal ensembles including the Oregon Bach Festival’s Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy, The Animato Choir of Lesvos, Greece, and The American Boychoir. In addition to her work as a conductor, she has also performed professionally as both vocal soloist and chorus member in London and the United States. She has sung for composers and conductors such as Aaron Copland, Helmuth Rilling, Mistlav Rostropovich, and Sir David Willcocks; and has had the opportunity to premiere works by Arvo Pärt, Krystof Penderecki, and a vocal chamber piece by Shostakovich conducted by Rostropovich in Carnegie Hall. She has been a member of the Oregon Bach Festival Berwick Chorus for many years, and while under the direction of Helmuth Rilling, were recipients of the Grammy award in 2000 for their performance of CREDO by Penderecki. Prior to her appointment to the St. Olaf faculty, she served for ten years as Associate Director of Choral Activities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Elizabeth Núñez is the Associate Artistic Director of the award-winning Young People’s Chorus of New York City, founded by YPC Artistic Director Francisco J. Núñez in 1988. She is also a conductor, choral clinician, soloist, and founding artistic director of The SoHarmoniums Women’s Choir. At YPC, an organization renowned for its diversity and supreme level of artistic excellence, she created and directs the acclaimed the Cantare chorus and serves as vocal coach for choristers in all six YPC divisions, ranging in age from 8 to 18, in rehearsals, performances, and for international tours to countries on four continents.

In addition, she is the director of the YPC School Choruses program, which every year brings YPC’s unique music education program to more than 1,100 children in New York City public schools. In 2014, Elizabeth created WIT: Women Inspiring Tomorrow, a mentoring initiative bringing YPC’s high school girls together with its alumnae and women across varying professions. Since joining the YPC in 2004, Elizabeth has led the Cantare chorus at international choral festivals in Kathaumixw, British Columbia; Llangollen, Wales; and at the Adolf Fredrik Choral Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, where Cantare was the first American choir ever invited to participate in this international choral event. In summer 2015, she helped lead YPC to five gold medals in the Golden Gate International Choral Festival.

As a sought-after choral clinician, Elizabeth has been invited by choral organizations across the country to give workshops and performances. Among them are the New York City Department of Education, Distinguished Concerts International, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, New York City School for Strings, NYSSMA, and the Norfolk Chamber Choir and Conductor Workshop of the Yale School of Music. Elizabeth most recently conducted the 2016 OAKE National Children’s Honor Choir. At a previous Organization of American Kodály Educators national conference, where she conducted Cantare, KONY News wrote, “the entire room of music educators leapt from their seats, moved to give a standing ovation in the middle of the performance.”

Elizabeth conducts at venues large and small throughout New York City, from Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center to Le Poisson Rouge and the Metropolitan Museum, as well as on national television, most recently on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. As the artistic director of SoHarmoniums, an intergenerational chorus of women from ages 20 to 80, Elizabeth conducts the ensemble in repertoire ranging from traditional classical to folk music and works by contemporary composers in such New York City venues as Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and Carnegie Hall. Elizabeth received a Bachelor of Music Education at Lee University and a Master of Music Education from the University of Oklahoma. She is a member of the Choral Music Experience artistic faculty at Ithaca College.

Dr. Sonja Sepúlveda is Director of Choral Activities and professor of music theory at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and conducts the Salem Chamber Choir, Chorale, and SuperTonix. She came to Salem College following positions at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky and Brewton Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia.

Graduating from Winthrop University with Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music degrees, Sonja Sepúlveda earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of South Carolina where she studied under Dr. Larry Wyatt and Dr. Carol Krueger. She received the William H. Nolte Graduate Assistant Teaching Award from the University of South Carolina in 2006 for her work in conducting and teaching. While working on her doctorate at USC, she conducted Carolina Alive and the Renaissance Singers.

Sonja Sepúlveda is former SC Choral Festival Chairman and served as SC All-State Chairman for four years. She also served as her state ACDA Chairman for Jazz and Show Choirs. Her choirs have toured Europe, Mexico, and Canada and have performed concerts for the National Cathedral, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center, South Carolina Music Educators Association (SCMEA), National American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), Southern Division ACDA, and the Music Educators National Conference (MENC). She conducted, as well sang choral parts for the ABC mini-series, North and South. Sonja Sepúlveda sang with the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus for eight years, as well with the Carnegie Hall Chorus in 2000 and 2002. She is well known for her work with youth choruses and is in demand as a choral adjudicator and clinician.

In 2006, she founded the Palmetto Voices, a choir of alumni students from Western Kentucky University, University of South Carolina, Brewton Parker College, Salem College and Sumter High School. The choir strives to preserve the legacy of the Negro Spiritual and share the vision that this unique American choral art form is for everyone. She is married to Juan Sepúlveda and they have two sons, Dru and Brys.

Dr. Carol Krueger formerly served as the Director of Choral Activities at Valdosta State University, Emporia State University, and Florida Southern. She also served as the Associate Director of Choral Activities at the University of South Carolina and the University of Montevallo. A native of Wisconsin, Krueger received her bachelor's degree in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and both an M.M. and D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from the University of Miami.

An active clinician, adjudicator and guest conductor, Krueger has most recently conducted festivals and honor choirs at the collegiate, high school and middle school levels in Maryland, Arkansas, South Dakota, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Kansas, New York, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Washington, Georgia, South Carolina, North Dakota, Indiana [2021] and Kentucky [2021]. In addition, Dr. Krueger served as the guest conductor of the North-North Central ACDA Middle School Treble Choir (Milwaukee, 2020( of Vivaldi’s Gloria in Carnegie Hall (2010), the Adult Chancel Choir and Chamber Singers at Montreat Presbyterian Association of Musicians Conference (2010), and multiple performances of Epcot’s Candlelight Processional and Massed Choir Program (2005). She is looking forward to conducting the SSAA High School Kentucky All State in 2021.

Krueger has presented interest sessions at the American Choral Directors National Convention in New York, the OAKE (Kodaly) National Convention in Charlotte, the ACDA Southern Division Conventions in Mobile, Nashville and Louisville, the Southern Division MENC Convention in Charleston, the North Central Division ACDA in Madison, the Eastern Division ACDA in Providence, the Eastern Division NAfME in Hartford, as well as interest sessions or workshops in twenty-eight states (Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Oregon [2020], and Colorado [2021). Krueger is also widely recognized for her work with music literacy. Oxford University Press publishes her book, Progressive Sight Singing.

Dr. Tram Sparks is Associate Professor of Practice at the USC Thornton School of Music. Prior to her work in Los Angeles, Sparks was Associate Professor and Associate Director of Choral Activities at Temple University Boyer College of Music & Dance, where she taught from 1999-2009. Dr. Sparks taught graduate and undergraduate courses in choral literature, conducting, and aural theory, and conducted the Concert Choir, University Chorale, Women’s Chorus and University Singers over the course of her ten years at Temple University. In addition to her appointment at Temple, she has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa) and Director of the Choral Program at St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

A native of Vietnam and a child refugee of the Vietnam War, Sparks’s earliest musical training was in Okinawa, Japan and subsequently, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Pre-College Division, where her studies included lessons in piano, solfege, eurythmics, and choral music (singing in a children’s choir). Sparks earned the Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and the Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Temple University. Her piano training, with the late Harvey Wedeen and David L. Stone, follows in the pedagogical lineages of Adele Marcus, Isabelle Vengerova, Josef Lhevinne, and Nicholas Slonimsky.

Sparks holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from Yale University. While at Yale, she completed certificate program studies in Music, Worship and the Arts at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and thereafter, served as music director in various churches and synagogues in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Sparks’s research interests center around two areas and the subtle interplay between them – conducting technique rooted in modern dance theory and movement analysis; and a contextual understanding of chirognomy, its forms and functions, in contemporaneous early communities of worship.

Honors, Awards & Competitions: Merit Award for Teaching and Creative Activity (Temple University), Presidential Summer Research Fellowship (Temple University), The French Award (Yale Institute of Sacred Music, The Richard De Long Prize (Yale Institute of Sacred Music), Edward Stanley Seder Scholar (Yale Institute of Sacred Music)

Academic degrees: DMA, Yale University School of Music, 2003, MMA, Yale University School of Music, 1998; MM, Temple University Boyer College of Music and Dance, 1995, BM, Temple University Boyer College of Music and Dance, 1993

Dr. Carolyn Cruse is Associate Director of Choral Activities and Associate Professor of Music Education at Texas Tech University, where she conducts the TTU Women's Chorale and teaches undergraduate music education courses including choral techniques, choral conducting, and vocal/choral pedagogy. Dr. Cruse is also active with the TTU Summer Master of Music Education program, teaching an intensive course each summer on topics related to choral rehearsal strategies, vocal/choral pedagogy, adolescent voice development, and choral conducting.

Dr. Cruse frequently serves as a clinician and festival adjudicator, and has been invited to conduct All-State and Regional Honor Choirs and present workshops in Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas, the Symposium on Singing and Song in St. John's, Newfoundland (Canada) in October 2015, and the Colorado All-State Women's Choir in February 2016. In addition, the TTU Women's Chorale performed for the 2012 Southwestern Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association in the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, TX. As a singer/performer, Dr. Cruse has been a member of the Westminster Choir (NJ), and has performed in ensembles for several National and Divisional Conferences of ACDA. She recently performed an inaugural concert and recorded a CD with the newly formed professional women's ensemble “mirabai,” conducted by Dr. Sandra Snow.

Dr. Cruse is a contributing author for the new Hal Leonard/McGraw Hill Choral Textbook Voices in Concert, and she currently serves as the College/Community Choirs Vice-President of TCDA. She holds a Ph.D. in Music Education from Michigan State University, a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from the University of North Texas. Prior to her appointment at Texas Tech, Dr. Cruse taught choral music for nine years at the Junior High and High School levels in Richardson and Plano, TX. She lives in Lubbock, TX with her husband Rob and their two dogs Riley and Maya, and enjoys cooking, movies, and boxing conditioning classes. Dr. Cruse is passionate about music teacher education and dedicates her time and efforts to prepare and nurture future music educators in all contexts.

Coreen Duffy is director of choral activities at the University of Montana School of Music, where she conducts Chamber Chorale and University Choir, teaches conducting, choral methods, and supervises student teachers. Duffy is an active clinician and composer; her works are published by Walton Music, ECS, and Pavane and featured in ACDA sessions. A specialist in Jewish choral music, Duffy has co-designed special performance/interest/worship sessions dedicated to Jewish repertoire at two National ACDA conferences (“ACDA Shabbat,” 2011; “Jewish Choral Music,” 2013) and has presented on the subject at national and international conferences, including in Hannover, Germany in 2019. Duffy founded the Second Avenue Jewish Chorale, which performed under her direction at Florida ACDA; she served two terms as R&R Chair for Ethnic and Multicultural Perspectives for Florida ACDA. She currently serves as NW ACDA R&R Co-Chair for World Musics and Cultures, as well as NW Division Representative for the NAfME Council for Choral Education, and on the Editorial Board for NCCO’s The Choral Scholar.

Penelope Cruz is currently the choir director at White Plains High School. Under her direction, the White Plains High School Choir has performed at Carnegie Hall, for the New York State School Board Association, at Penn State University, and at various festivals and competitions where they have received highest ratings. Penelope Cruz is the President for ACDA Eastern Region.. She is a member of the inaugural National ACDA Diversity Initiatives Committee for which she made contributions to the Choral Journal and as part of an ad hoc committee on audition guidelines for honor choirs and auditioned choirs.

For the Eastern Division, Cruz has been Program Chair (2016 and 2020) and Honor Choirs Chair (2012 and 2014), where she initiated the Latino Repertoire and Chinese Repertoire Honor choirs. She has served as NY State President (2014-2015) and as Repertoire and Standards chair for both Women’s Choirs and Multicultural and Ethnic Perspectives. She serves on the American Choral Directors' Association New York Board as the Repertoire and Standards Chair for Multicultural and Ethnic Perspectives, as member of the NYSSMA Diversity Committee, and as Area All State Choruses Co-Chair for Westchester County.

A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and Eastman School of Music, Ms. Cruz has taught at the elementary, middle school, and high school level in the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York and has sung professionally in opera, musical theater, and in choirs. Ms. Cruz was selected in 2005 and 2010 for the National Endowments for the Humanities Summer Teachers' Institutes, traveling to Vienna to study Mozart and to Germany to study Bach. She has served as a clinician for multiple professional choral and music education conferences. She has conducted elementary, middle, and high school choirs, children’s community choirs, and festival choirs.

Linda R. Hall, a native of Baltimore, taught music education in The Baltimore Public School System for 32 years. Her inspiration was fueled by music educators: Spencer Hammond, Dorothy Marshall, the late Lois Wright and the late Dr. Nathan Carter. She served as choral director of the Baltimore City College High School in Baltimore, Maryland for 26 years.

Under Ms. Hall’s direction, the City College choirs delighted audiences from the White House and abroad; in Verona, Italy at The International Choral Music Days Festival, The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Milan, as well as, tours in Rome, Tuscany, Spain and France. The choirs performed extensively along the eastern seaboard concertizing, competing and participating in numerous festivals where they consistently won superior ratings, awards and trophies for their performances. Ms. Hall was privileged and honored to have the opportunity to conduct the City College Choir at the Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival as a guest of Dr. Craig Jessop, former conductor of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Ms. Hall has prepared choirs for numerous performances with The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and co-directed works with The Baltimore Choral Arts Society and the Morgan State University Choir. Hall also served as conductor and clinician for The Annual Ithaca College Gospel Festival. She has conducted Honors Choruses in MD, DC and VA and The ACDA Voices United Summer Conference festival chorus, where she was privileged to share the stage with Weston Noble. Another highlight of Ms. Hall’s career was the opportunity and the good fortune to work with the Washington Performing Arts Society – Men and Women of the Gospel, and conduct the world premiere of INDABA! written by and performed with Sweet Honey in the Rock. She enjoys opportunities to perform as a clinician, consultant, adjudicator and conductor. Ms. Hall has also served as The ACDA Eastern Division and State and Division Repertoire and Standards Chair for Senior High School and maintains her membership with ACDA and NAfME. She has served as Minster of Music for many churches and most recently the music director of The St. John Baptist Church Cathedral Choir in Columbia, MD and Minister of Music at Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD.

Among the many awards Ms. Hall is grateful to have received are the ‘Alumnae of Excellence’ Award from her alma mater, Shenandoah University, the Excellence Merit Achievement Initiative for Maryland’s Minority Students Award, the Baltimore City Council’s Teacher of the Year Award, and the Outstanding Teacher Award from Baltimore City Community College. In addition, she received the Teacher Recognition Award from Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth and was the honoree for The BSO (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and The Soulful Symphony in partnership with Magic 95.9 and WWIN–FM, “Honoring Those Who Inspire the Young and Gifted”. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Excellence in Music Education Award in Baltimore City and the Iota Phi Lambda- Apple for the Teacher Award. She has shaken hands with two presidents, performed for four and received citations from the governors, several mayors, city council, and many other notable officials. The greatest reward, however, comes from working with those who have a passion for singing and a talent waiting to be developed!!

Ms. Hall received her BME from Shenandoah University (then, Shenandoah Conservatory of Music) and her MA from Morgan State University

Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Lewis & Clark College, where she conducts two of the three choirs, teaches courses in conducting and music history, and oversees the vibrant voice and choral areas. Her work blends a focus on challenging repertoire performed in historically, politically, and culturally informed ways with a deep sense of connection with performers and audience.

At Lewis & Clark, she has conducted music ranging from medieval chant to the American premiere of a work for symphonic chorus and Javanese gamelan. In 2014, she was an inaugural winner of the Lorry Lokey Faculty Excellence Award, honoring “inspired teaching, rigorous scholarship, demonstrated leadership, and creative accomplishments.” In December of 2019, she won the David Savage Award, given to a faculty member whose “vision and sustained service to the College have advanced the general academic and intellectual welfare of our community of teacher-scholars.”

Dr. FitzGibbon founded Resonance Ensemble in 2009, a professional choral ensemble presenting powerful programs that promote meaningful social change. Resonance amplifies voices that have long been silenced, and they do so through moving, thematic concerts that highlight solo and choral voices, new and underrepresented composers, visual and other performing artists, and community partners. With Resonance, she has collaborated with the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Symphony, Kingdom Sound Gospel Ensemble, Third Angle New Music, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Lauderdale and Hunter Noack, poet/performer Renee Mitchell, the Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra, and local actors, composers, visual artists, and dancers. Resonance has been described as “one of Oregon’s most valuable musical resources” (Oregon Arts Watch) and “one of the Northwest’s finest choirs” (Willamette Week). In June of 2019, Chorus America honored Dr. FitzGibbon with the prestigious Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal in recognition of her work with Resonance Ensemble. Chorus America’s press release noted, “As founder and artistic director of Resonance Ensemble, FitzGibbon has captained a bold organizational shift—from its original mission exploring links between music, art, poetry, and theatre, to a new focus exclusively on presenting concerts that promote meaningful social change.” With Resonance, she has commissioned significant new works by composers Renee Favand-See, Melissa Dunphy, Joe Kye, and Damien Geter.

Dr. FitzGibbon has also served on the faculty of the summertime Berkshire Choral International festival and conducted choirs at Harvard, Boston, Cornell, and Clark Universities, and at the University of Michigan. She has directed secondary school choral programs, guest conducted honor choirs, and adjudicated solo and choral competitions, and she serves on the board of the National Collegiate Choral Organization.

A lyric soprano, Dr. FitzGibbon is a frequent recitalist and performer of early through new music, having performed with Friends of Rain, Third Angle New Music Ensemble, Cappella Romana, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Clark University’s Faculty Recital Series, the Boston Secession Artist Series, Cornell University Mid-Day Music, and recitals at the Berkshire Choral Festival. On the concert stage, she has sung solos with ensembles including the Windsor Symphony, Berkshire Choral Festival, Boston Secession, Kings Chapel Concert Series, Ocean City Pops Orchestra, Boston University Chamber Chorus, and University of Michigan Early Music Ensemble, in works from Schütz to world premieres.

Dr. Elisa Macedo Dekaney is dually appointed by the School of Education and the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of choral music, music education, music research, and world music. Additionally, in 2014 she joined the prestigious core faculty for the Renée Crown Honors Program.

Along with her husband Joshua Dekaney, Elisa Dekaney has been the founder and director of Samba Laranja: the Syracuse University Brazilian Ensemble since 2001. Under their direction, Samba Laranja performs regularly for k-12 schools across Central New York and for events in the community and on campus. The group has also performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City four times since 2010 and has been awarded two Syracuse Area Music Awards for Best Recording Other Style in 2011 and 2015 for the recordings Native Orange and Pathways, respectively.

From 2003 to 2011, Dekaney was music director and conductor of the Syracuse University Oratorio Society, an auditioned choir that performed regularly with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. Recently, she has been the conductor for the Syracuse University Concert Choir and the Syracuse University Women’s Choir.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dekaney earned a bachelor’s degree in piano performance at the Seminário Teológico Batista do Sul do Brasil and a bachelor’s degree in communication from Universidade Federal Fluminense. She continued her studies in the United States, earning a master’s degree in choral conducting from the University of Missouri-Kansas City under Eph Ehly and a Ph.D. in choral music education from the Florida State University under André Thomas, Judy Bowers, Clifford Madsen, and Rodney Eichenberger.

Dekaney has been an active researcher, clinician, and choral conductor in the United States and abroad. Her scholarly research focuses on aesthetic response to Brazilian music, choral repertoire from the global community, International Phonetic Alphabet, clinical simulation, and thin-slice methodology. Her studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Research in Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, The Choral Journal, International Education, Music Educators Journal, Contributions to Music Education, Journal of Music Teacher Education, and Update. Carl Fischer and BriLee have published her choral arrangements of Brazilian folksongs co-written with Lon Beery, and her book, co-authored with Deborah Cunningham, Travel On and On: Interdisciplinary Lessons on the Music of World Cultures, is published by Rowman and Littlefield Education and the National Association for Music Education.

As part of her service to the choral music education profession, Dekaney has served for several terms as the New York State American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Repertoire and Standards Chair for Ethnic and Multicultural Music. Additionally, she served for four years as chair of the Special Research Interest Group in Learning and Development of the National Association for Music Education. From 2012 to 2016 Dekaney was the Repertoire and Standards Chair for Ethnic and Multicultural Perspectives for the Eastern Division ACDA. In 2016, she became Repertoire and Resources Chair – Encompassing Genres with the ACDA Eastern Division. In 2006 Dekaney was awarded the Paul and Veronica Abel Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Art of Choral Performance, and in 2015 she received the Tiffany Award for Outstanding Service to the Cause of Music, both awarded by the Civic Morning Musicals. In 2007, the College of Visual and Performing Arts honored Dekaney with an Outstanding Faculty Award. In 2011 she was a Curt Silberman Seminar Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where she engaged in advanced Holocaust studies.

Education: Ph.D., Florida State University, M.M., University of Missouri-Kansas City, Conservatory of Music, Bachelor’s degree, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Bachelor’s degree, Seminário Teológico Batista do Sul do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Dr. Elise Hepworth is Professor and Director of Choral Activities and Music Education at Missouri Western State University in Saint Joseph. She teaches choral literature, choral conducting, K-6 and 7-12 music methods courses, and conducts the MWSU Concert Chorale and the MWSU Renaissance/Chamber Singers, recently performing at the Missouri Music Educators Association Conference/In-Service in January 2018. She is a member of Kantorei of Kansas City, performing with the ensemble at the 2019 ACDA National Conference in Kansas City, and is the founding director of the Robidoux Chorale, a semi-professional chamber ensemble in Saint Joseph.

Dr. Hepworth is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State University (B.S.Ed.), The University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music (M.M.E.), The University of Mississippi (D.A.), and the New Zealand School of Music (G.Dip.). Additionally, she is nationally certified in the pedagogies of Orff Schulwerk and Zoltan Kodaly.

She currently serves as Repertoire and Resources chair for the Missouri Choral Directors Association, as well as the Advancing Music Education Chair and co-chair of the Advocacy Network Council for the Missouri Music Educators Association. She also holds a membership with the National Association for Teachers of Singing.

Dr. Hepworth was recently awarded the Foundation for Teaching Excellence by Missouri Western State University, the Mayor’s Award for Arts Educator of the Year and the Shine On Award for the community of Saint Joseph, and the MCDA Northwest District Outstanding Director for the year 2016. She is serving as Missouri Western State University’s faculty senate president for 2019-2020, and is an avid performer, clinician, and presenter at state, national, and international conventions.

She lives in Saint Joseph with her husband, Matt, and their two cats, Abby and Alex.

Morna Edmundson is one of Canada’s best-known choral conductors with a strong reputation for excellence. Passionate since childhood about choral singing, she obtained degrees and diplomas in vocal music in Vancouver, Bellingham, and Stockholm, Sweden where her teachers included Eric Ericson.

In 1987, she co-founded Elektra Women’s Choir with Diane Loomer, a treasured partnership that lasted 22 years. In 2009, Morna became Elektra’s sole Artistic Director, continuing the choir’s strong leadership role in concert presentation, commissioning, recording, and mentorship.

In addition to her work with Elektra, Morna is the Artistic Director of EnChor, a Vancouver-based, auditioned, mixed choir for mature voices. For 14 years Morna shared her love of quality repertoire with a new generation of singers in her role as Associate Artistic Director of Coastal Sound Music Academy, where she was Music Director of the mixed-voice Youth Chamber Choir.

Morna has adjudicated in North America and Asia, conducted honour choirs in several states, co-directed the American Choral Directors Association National Women’s Honour Choir, and gives frequent workshops with choirs of all ages.

In 2000 she was presented with the Healey Willan Award for outstanding service to the BC Choral Federation, an organization she serves as a member of the Willan Council. In February 2009 Morna was a recipient of the BC Community Achievement Award, which recognized her gifted organizational talent, leadership by example, and her encouragement of others to pursue their musical and choral goals. In June 2011 Morna received a Vancouver YWCA Woman of Distinction award in recognition of her work with Elektra. Since 2013, she has served as a Board member of Chorus America, the advocacy, research, and leadership development organization that gives voice to the choral field. In 2020, she joined the board of Choral Canada as its President Elect.

March 20-Dr. Marla Butke recently retired from Otterbein University where she directed the Women’s Chorale and taught General Music and Choral Methods, holds degrees from Miami University, Wright State University and The Ohio State University. She is a Master Teaching Artist with the American Eurhythmics Society and serves as the President of the Board of AES. Dr. Butke regularly presents Dalcroze Eurhythmics workshops throughout the United States and internationally, including presentations in Spain, China, and England, and for the American Choral Directors Association National and Central/North Central Regional Conferences, as well as other national and state music education conferences. Dr. Butke and Dr. Frego wrote Meaningful Movement: A Music Teacher’s Guide to Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Music is Elementary Press, published in 2016, as well as numerous journal articles individually and collaboratively on the topic of Dalcroze Eurhythmics.

Dr. Mitos Andaya Hart (she/her/hers) teaches undergraduate conducting, graduate choral literature, assists with graduate conducting, and directs the Temple University Singers and Temple Voices. Prior to her appointment at Temple, she served as Associate Director of Choral Activities at the University of Georgia where she directed ensembles in early music, jazz, women’s, chamber, and symphonic chorus repertoire. There she was awarded one of the university’s highest honors, the Richard B. Russell Undergraduate Teaching Award, and twice received the Student Government Association Award for “Outstanding Commitment to Students and Academic Excellence.”

Andaya Hart has taught choral music and vocal jazz at the university level in the United States, South Africa, and Australia. She taught at the Center of Jazz and Popular Music with Darius Brubeck at the University of Natal (now University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa) forming the first university vocal jazz ensemble in the country, and at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, South Australia. She served as guest conductor of the Netherlands Chamber Choir in Amsterdam and Arnhem in 2007; conducted the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir in concert at the Lund International Choral Festival in Sweden; and conducted the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Netherlands Radio Chorus, in Haarlem in 2005. She conducted at the 2005 Transient Glory Choral and Chamber Music Festival in New York and worked with Pulitzer Prize winning-composer, David Del Tredici. In 2004, she prepared ensembles for the BBC Philharmonic conductor/Scottish composer, James MacMillan, for his Georgia residency. She was selected to study with Marin Alsop at the Colorado Symphony Orchestra Workshop in 2003, Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival in 2003 and 2004, Simon Halsey and André Thomas in Haarlem, Netherlands in 2005, and Frieder Bernius in Varese, Italy in 2006. Her conducting teachers at the University of Kansas were Simon Carrington and orchestral conductor, Brian Priestman.

Her ensembles have been invited to perform throughout the United States such as at the Boston Early Music Festival, Southern American Choral Directors Association Conference, and the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival. Her choirs have also traveled and performed in England, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal and Spain. She served on the conducting faculty of the Westminster Chamber Choir with Westminster Choir College of Rider University and has served as a member of the judges panel for the International A Cappella Festival in Leipzig, Germany. In 2010, she served as the clinician and guest conductor for the First Kenyan Choral Directors National Conference hosted by Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya and in 2013 for the First Busan Choral Academy in South Korea. She has conducted various honor choirs and all-state choirs in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and continues to serve as a national clinician, adjudicator and guest conductor for festivals.

Andaya Hart has Renaissance and other editions published with Alliance Music Publications, and jazz compositions and arrangements with UNC Jazz Press and Hal Leonard. She served as the chair for Jazz Repertoire and Standards for the Georgia American Choral Directors Association, is active in the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, and the International Federation of Choral Music. She served on the National Board of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO) as Vice-President, President-Elect, then as President culminating in the 2015 National Conference in Portland.

Since 2014, Andaya Hart has been the Artistic Director of PhilHarmonia, a Philadelphia-based chamber choir which has commissioned and premiered works including Melissa Dunphy’s American DREAMers based on texts by young American Immigrants and DACA recipients.

She is married and proud to live in a multigenerational and multi-pet home, raising her grade-school son. Education: BME, K-12 certification, University of Northern Colorado, MM, choral conducting, University of Kansas, DMA, choral conducting, University of Kansas

Dr. Merrin Guice Gill is the Director of Choral Activities at Bethel University. Dr. Guice Gill directs the Bethel Choir and Chamber Singers. She also teaches private voice. Dr. Guice Gill has previously taught on the campuses of Buena Vista University, The University of Wisconsin, and Miami University Ohio, Hamilton Campus. Her choral work has led her to conduct throughout the United States as well as in Canada and Europe. She was selected as one of ten International Conductors to participate in the Sarteano, Italy Choral Conducting Workshop with Simon Carrington and Brian O'Connell where she directed a choir of professionals. Along with choral work Dr. Guice Gill has significant experience conducting orchestras. She was the assistant conductor for the Agnes Scott Community Orchestra in Georgia, worked as a conductor with the Stoughton Opera Company in Wisconsin, and was awarded a young artist award for Conducting by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, which she subsequently led in performance.

Dr. Guice Gill's ensembles are given a vast array of valuable experiences. Her university choirs have toured throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. They have worked with composers Morten Lauridsen and Stacey Gibbs at College Honor Choir presentations. She has led her choirs in receiving National and International awards and recognitions, including: first and second place prizes in the "Riva Del Garda International Choral Competition", Silver Medal at the "World Choir Games" and as finalists in the "American Prize for Choral Performance". Dr. Guice Gill has conducted at the Liechtenstein Palace in Prague, various venues in Italy, The Arnoff Center in Cincinnati, and her choir has performed under. Guice Gill's direction at Carnegie Hall in New York. She is a frequent guest clinician at high schools and colleges for both voice and choral studies.

Dr. Guice Gill's scholarship, which focuses on 20th century text setting, has been presented at both regional and National Conferences and published in various journals including the National Collegiate Choral Organizations publication, The Choral Scholar. She was the recipient of the Rockefeller Brothers Education Grant and Curriculum Award and several other grants in education and research.

As a trained soprano Dr. Guice Gill has performed with several opera companies and in a variety of venues including: Cincinnati Opera, "Mostly Mozart Festival" at Lincoln Center, Madison Overture Center and most recently as a soloist for a debut concert for composer Stacey Gibbs at Carnegie Hall. Dr. Guice Gill frequently performs lecture recitals and maintains a successful vocal studio. Dr. Guice Gill's students have gone on to acceptance at selective graduate programs for voice, conducting and directing including University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign, Arizona State, and University of Texas Austin and James Madison University.

Dr. Guice Gill is a member of American Choral Director Association, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Phi Beta Kappa International Honor Society, and National Collegiate Choral Organization, in which she is a National Board Member.

Courses Taught: Choral Conducting, Private Voice, Bethel Choir, Chamber Singers, Festival Choir. Awards: Riva Del Garda International Choral Competition First and Second Place Honors, World Choir Games Honors, Finalist American Prize Choral Performance.

Dr. Leslie J. Blackwell is the Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Music and Music Education at Kennesaw State University where she has directed choral activities since 1998. Dr. Blackwell’s duties include conducting the KSU Men’s Ensemble, KSU Chorale, and KSU Chamber Singers as well as teaching advanced choral conducting and literature. A native of Georgia, Blackwell received the Associate of Arts degree from Gordon Junior College (1982), the Bachelor of Music in Music Education from West Georgia College (1984), the Master of Music from Georgia State University (1991), and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Kentucky (2002).

Choirs under Dr. Blackwell’s direction have performed at National, Regional, and State conferences of the American Choral Directors Association as well as numerous Georgia Music Educators Association State Conventions. In 2010 Dr. Blackwell presented Songs of South America for the American Choral Directors Association with the KSU Chamber Singers, featuring music of South America based upon her choral research and work in Argentina. In October 2013 the KSU Chamber Singers were selected to perform at the National Collegiate Choral Organization 5th National Conference. Most recently, the KSU Chamber Singers performed at the 2018 Georgia Music Educators Association State Convention and have been selected to sing at the American Choral Directors Association Southern Division Conference in March 2020.

Recognized for her work with men’s voices, Dr. Blackwell is sought after as a guest conductor for All-State Men's Choirs. Conducting engagements include the 2013 Georgia All State Men’s Chorus, 2016 Alabama All State Men’s Chorus, 2017 Tennessee All State Chorus, and in 2018 both the Kentucky and South Carolina Men’s All State Choirs. Dr. Blackwell served six seasons as the Artistic Director of the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus, and at KSU established the annual KSU Male Chorus Day, bringing upwards of 200 high school male students to campus. Under Dr. Blackwell’s direction the KSU Men’s Ensemble, a non-auditioned ensemble, has achieved prestigious accomplishments on a State, Regional, and National stage appearing at the American Choral Directors Association Southern Division Conference in 2014, 2016, and at the National Conference American Choral Directors Association in Dallas, Texas, 2013.

Influential musicians with whom Dr. Blackwell has worked are Robert Shaw, Ann Howard-Jones, Yoel Levi, Norma Raybon, John Haberlen, David Maslanka, Ola Gjeilo, Ethan Sperry, Brian Schmidt, and Jefferson Johnson. In addition to her commitments at Kennesaw State University, Dr. Blackwell is active as a clinician and adjudicator and holds memberships in MENC, GMEA, and ACDA. She has served as the Repertoire and Standards Chair for Men’s Choirs, Georgia ACDA. Currently, Dr. Blackwell is the Artistic Director and Founding Director of the Kennesaw State University Community & Alumni Choir.

March 21-Dr. Deborah Chandler is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Louisiana at Monroe where she directs the Concert Choir and the Chamber Singers and teaches choral literature, conducting, and serves as advisor to all graduate conducting majors. She also is musical director and conductor of the Monroe Symphony Chorus, the Louisiana Lyric Opera, and is the host of “Vocal Vibes” on KEDM radio. She also serves as Minister of Music at Northminster Church in Monroe.

Dr. Chandler received her Doctor of Philosophy in Music Education/Conducting at Florida State University in 2004 where she also received her Master in Music Education. She received her Bachelor of Music Education at Valdosta State University in 1981. For over eighteen years, she served as a Director of Music in the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination. She also taught music history and chorus at Tallahassee Community College.

At Florida State, Dr. Chandler studied with Dr. André Thomas, Rodney Eichenburger, Dr. Judy Bowers, and Dr. Kevin Fenton. She is conductor emeritus of the Tallahassee Civic Chorale and a member of the American Choral Directors Association, Music Educators National Conference, Pi Kappa Lambda, Alpha Chi Honor Society, and an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Phi and Tau Beta Sigma.

In 1993, She received the Guardian Ad Litem Exemplary Service Award and the Corinne Holleman Gridley Achievement Award in 1996. A music scholarship was established anonymously in her name at Florida State University in 1994. In June 2003, She was chosen as one of ten conductors selected internationally to study with German conductor, Helmuth Rilling, at the Oregon Bach Festival. She was also selected in 2004 to conduct with Maestro Rilling at the first Toronto Bach Festival at the University of Toronto. She also remains active as a clinician, guest conductor and adjudicator. Deborah is currently the chairperson of the Louisiana American Choral Directors Association Repertoire and Standards for colleges and universities. In March of 2011, Dr. Chandler was awarded the Outstanding Service to the Arts Award for Northeast Louisiana by the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council.

Roberta Jackson and Debra Burgess have led the Portland Symphonic Girlchoir, widely acclaimed by composers, conductors, music educators, and audiences, to its current status as one of the finest youth choirs in North America. Roberta received her Masters Degree from the University of Colorado; Deb received her B.A.E. Degree from Pacific Lutheran University. Both have been awarded the distinguished Artist Teacher Diploma from the Choral Music Experience Institute, working with Dr. Doreen Rao. Deb has served on the NW and OR ACDA Board of Directors as R & R Chair for Children and Youth and currently teaches music, grades K – 8, at St. Thomas More School. As Girlchoir’s Vocal Coach, she presents fall and spring solo clinics and trains nearly 40 % of its members as soloists each season. Both conductors are frequent presenters at Chorus America conferences, OMEA conferences, and at Oregon, Northwest Division and National ACDA Conferences and Roberta was awarded the 2018 Oregon ACDA Podium Award. Their article, “The Better C: Building Community Through Collaboration” appeared in the March 2016 issue of The Choral Journal, publication of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and they were privileged to be included as chapter authors in the 2017 GIA book, Working With Young Singers: Educational Philosophies of Expert Children’s Choir Conductors.

Dr. Joy Hirokawa is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Bel Canto Youth Chorus of The Bach Choir of Bethlehem and adjunct faculty at Temple University. She formerly led the music education program at Moravian College for ten years. She earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Education from Boston University, a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting from Temple University, and a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Music Education, also from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Hirokawa is a frequent guest conductor and clinician, presenting regularly at ACDA, NAfME and PMEA conferences. On an international level, she was a judge and clinician for the 7th Bali International Choir Festival in July 2018. She has appeared as a guest conductor for both elementary and secondary choirs that have included the CT All State Elementary Honors Choir, the Middle School Treble Alabama All State Chorus, the ACDA-PA All State Middle School Honors Choir, and the ACDA-PA and DE ACDA Festival for Women’s Voices among many others. Under her direction, The Bel Canto Youth Chorus has performed locally, nationally and internationally to great acclaim, and has appeared at ACDA, NAfME, and PMEA conferences. International tours have taken the choir to Central Europe, Italy, Ireland, England, and Canada. Dr. Hirokawa’s published arrangements include her jazz arrangement of “My Favorite Things” and the Andalusian song “Lamma Badaa Yatathanna,” which have appeared on numerous festival programs and reading sessions. Her jazz arrangement of “Lullaby of Birdland,” was included in Voices in Concert, a choral text published by McGraw-Hill and Hal Leonard. Her newest jazz arrangement for young voices is “Accentuate the Positive,” published by Hal Leonard. She is the ACDA Eastern Division Chair for Youth Choirs and the ACDA-PA President Elect Designate. She is honored to be the recipient of the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission 2018 Tribute to the Arts Award which recognizes “those who engage in making, supporting and encouraging artistic endeavors that enrich our community.” Dr. Hirokawa taught in the public schools for 20 years prior to teaching at the collegiate level.

Michelle Jensen is a choral director, clinician, and teacher. Currently directing the Chamber Singers and teaching in the area of Music Education at Azusa Pacific University, she has also served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California where she is currently pursuing a DMA in Choral Music and earned both her BM and MME.

With Michelle’s leadership her choirs have won significant international awards at top Choral competitions, and were selected to represent the United States at the 50th International Competition of Choirs in Austria, where they were awarded first place in every category. Michelle continues to serve as a clinician, adjudicator, honor choir conductor, choreographer, and guest artist throughout the United States and abroad.

Michelle is a member of both SAG and AFTRA with an extensive performance resume including commercials, voice-overs, music videos, guest-star roles on television and live performances. Michelle continues to serve as a clinician, adjudicator, honor choir conductor, choreographer, and guest artist throughout the United States and abroad. Under the direction of Jensen, the Sterling Ensemble has performed in historic venues in Europe and America, and they recorded for a GRAMMY®-balloted album with soprano Sangeeta Kaur.

Judith Herrington is the Founder and Artistic Director of Tacoma Youth Chorus and conductor of the Women’s Choir, Chorale and Chamber Choir. Ms. Herrington brings to her teaching at Tacoma Youth Chorus experience as a highly regarded internationally, nationally and regionally as a guest conductor, workshop and choral clinician. She served on the faculty of Charles Wright Academy for 44 years, she was a recipient of the Inspirational Faculty Award and Murray Foundation Chair for Teaching Excellence. A graduate of the University of Oregon, Ms. Herrington earned her Master of Education degree from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Having served in several leadership positions for the WA-American Choral Directors Association Board, she is the 2011 recipient of its Leadership and Service Award. She is an inaugural member of the School of Arts and Communication Advisory Board at Pacific Lutheran University. She has served as visiting faculty at VanderCook College of Music and inducted into the Washington State Music Educators Association Hall of Fame. A noted composer and arranger, she has published through Pavane Publishing, Hal Leonard Publishing, and Colla Voce Publishing. She also edits two choral series for Pavane Publishing.

Lynn Drafall NOTE FROM GALVÁN: Lynn has retired and is no longer doing clinics. However, many people felt strongly that she should be honored for all that she has given to the choral profession. I certainly am aware of all that she did for the eastern division of ACDA. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Lynn. You are beloved and appreciated.

Lynn Drafall joined the faculty of the The Pennsylvania State University School of Music in 1992. She taught courses in graduate and undergraduate choral conducting, music education, and conducted the Concert Choir and Oriana Singers.

An active festival conductor and adjudicator, she worked with festival choirs throughout the Mid-West and Mid-Atlantic, and conducted all-state high school choirs in Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Penn State choirs under Drafall's direction toured England, Germany, and Austria, and also toured nationally, presenting concerts in Texas, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. In addition, they performed at conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association.

Drafall was the recipient of the University's prestigious George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2008 and received the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association's Citation of Excellence in 2011. She received the Elaine Brown Award for Choral Excellence from the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Choral Directors Association in 2013. A member of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education, Drafall is also a member of Pi Kappa Lambda and Phi Delta Kappa.

She is a past president of the Eastern Division of the American Choral Directors Association, as well as a past president of the Pennsylvania state chapter. She has published articles in the Music Educators Journal, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, and PMEA News. A native of Illinois, Drafall received her degrees in music education and choral conducting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously served on the faculties of Northern Illinois University and the University of Mississippi and, prior to her career in higher education, she taught for eleven years in the public schools of Illinois. Dr. Drafall retired in spring 2018.

Beth Holmes currently serves on the Millikin University choral staff conducting the Millikin Women and the voice faculty teaching private voice. A choir of 65 select voices, the Millikin Women involve students of every major. They tour regionally, often host or participate in an annual women’s choral festival and participate with the Millikin Union of Choirs in the annual Vespers at Millikin as well as in major choral/orchestral works. They also enjoy taking an annual spring tour in the region.

Beth is an active guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator, having conducted District, All-State and ACDA Convention Honor Choirs throughout the Midwest. Recent engagements include the ACDA North Central Division Collegiate Women’s Honor Choir (Minnesota), Next Directions Choral Conference (Wisconsin) and All State choirs in Kentucky, Alabama and Wisconsin. In both 2016 & 2017 she conducted The National Festival Chorus in Carnegie Hall, New York City. Recent clinician opportunities include presenting headliner sessions on vocal techniques, choral methodologies and repertoire for summer music teacher conferences at the Tennessee State ACDA Conference (Tennessee) and Hillsdale Barney Charter Initiative Conference (Michigan.) Often asked to clinic in choral settings, Beth also gives workshops in vocal techniques and voice building at choral conventions and music conferences. Recent opportunities have included a workshop with the Glen Ellen-Wheaton Community Choir in Wheaton, IL and teaching daily sessions and masterclasses at Montreat Conference on Music and Worship in North Carolina.

In addition to her collegiate responsibilities, Beth was the Artistic and Musical Director of the Millikin University Children & Youth Choir Program for 7 years. In this role she conducted the Concert Youth Chorale and coordinated a tiered structure of four choirs, six staff/conductors and a system of student interns from the Millikin School of Music. She enjoys working with talented singers and teachers to create moments of musical excellence.

B.S. in Vocal Music Education - Kansas State University, M.M. in Choral Conducting - Arizona State University. Professional Associations: American Choral Directions Association (ACDA) - having also served as both Central Division of ACDA and State of Illinois Women’s Repertoire and Standards Chair; National Association for Music Education (NAfME)

Dr. Laura Diddle is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at South Dakota State University (SDSU) where she conducts the Concert Choir, Madrigal Singers and the Choralia (the Women’s Choir). She teaches applied voice to music majors and minors and is responsible for vocal music education courses. Dr. Diddle received her Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance, and Master of Arts at the Indiana University School of Music and her Ph.D. in Music Education from the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Diddle began her career at SDSU in 2003 as Associate Director of Choral Activities and was promoted to Director of Choral Activities in Fall 2012. Under Diddle’s direction, the select 70 voice Concert Choir has performed regionally and internationally. The Concert Choir tours regionally every year, performs a fully staged Madrigal Dinner every other year, and is the face of the SDSU Choral Department. Dr. Diddle also leads the 120-voiced SDSU University Women’s Ensemble Choralia. The ensemble toured Moscow and St. Petersburg Russia during 2012 and regularly performs in Women’s Choir festivals across the region yearly. Her private voice students regularly compete and place highly in state, regional, and national voice competitions. Many of her students chose to attend graduate school in voice performance in schools such as Indiana University, the University of Michigan, Florida State University, the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Arizona State University, and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

In addition to her conducting duties at SDSU, Dr. Diddle is active as a guest conductor, adjudicator and clinician in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. She was co-conductor of Midwest Ambassador’s Tour to Western Europe for Summer 2007-2019. She is sought after to present interest sessions in her areas of research which include Repertoire Selection Practices of Beginning Choral Music Educators, Curriculum Development, and Early Childhood Music Education.

Dr. Cari Earnhart serves as the Director of Choral Activities at California State University, Fresno, where she conducts the Concert Choir, Chamber Singers, Masterworks Chorus, and teaches undergraduate and graduate conducting. Dr. Earnhart combines careers as conductor, teacher and singer.

In April 2017, the Fresno State Chamber Singers, under her direction, were invited to perform at the Library of Congress to honor the 21st US Poet Laureate. The Fresno State Choirs maintain an active performing profile. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she is in high demand as an adjudicator, clinician, guest conductor and presenter. Earnhart has worked with choirs in the US and abroad. As a conductor abroad, she served as Director of Choral Activities at the American University of Sharjah and conductor of Nassim al Saba, an Arabic choral music ensemble. She has also made guest conducting appearances with the Budapesti Vándor Kórus in Budapest, Hungary; served as Maestro of Ensemble Vocale Tempus Floridum and as Maestro Collaboratore of Coro dell’ Accademia del Diletto and Coro Polofonico del Caricentro, all in Florence. She worked as musical director for Speech Bubbles theater group, based in Istanbul from 2010-2013 and as guest conductor for the Istanbul International Chamber Choir. Earnhart was the first female Conductor of the UNT Men’s Chorus and served as Assistant Conductor of Schola Cantorum of Texas in Ft. Worth. In addition, she has conducted honor choirs, served as clinician for choral festivals and presented workshops on Arabic choral music, vocal pedagogy/epidemiology, conducting, and building ensembles in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Vancouver, Canada. She has upcoming engagements this spring in California, New York, Nevada and Tennessee. Earnhart has also served on the choral faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute since 2018. She has presented at state, regional, national and international conferences. She also serves as the ACDA Western Region Board as the Repertoire and Resources Chair for Repertoire Specific.

An accomplished vocalist, Earnhart has appeared as a guest artist with numerous university, professional, community and church choirs throughout the country and abroad. She began her professional singing career in New York City and has performed professionally as a soloist in the US, Europe and the Middle East. Currently, she has performed with The Choral Pickup (Seattle, WA and Atlanta, GA) since 2014 and performs regionally in California. She has also performed with the Coro Cameristico Fiorentino (Florence, Italy), New World Voices (Dallas, TX) the New York Virtuoso Singers and with Conspirare (Austin, TX).

Dr. Earnhart holds a DMA in Choral Conducting with related field studies in Vocal Pedagogy from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, an MM in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy and a BM in Vocal Performance from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK. She has taught at the American University of Sharjah (UAE), the University of North Texas, BT Müzik Evi (Istanbul), Oklahoma Panhandle State University, Oklahoma State University, and in the Texas public schools. Dr. Earnhart holds memberships with the American Choral Directors Association, the California Choral Directors Association, the National Collegiate Choral Organization, the National Association for Music Education, California Music Educators Association, International Federation of Choral Music and Chorus America.

Chantae D. Pittman is in her 2nd year as Director of Choral Activities at Campbell High School in Smyrna, GA. Ms. Pittman is deeply committed to serving her community through music. She is a proud graduate of Tennessee State University receiving her Bachelor of Science in Music Education in 2010. Ms. Pittman has since earned a Master's Degree in Music Education from VanderCook College of Music (Chicago, IL, 2013). She is currently working toward her Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in Choral Music Education at the University of Georgia where she will graduate May 2021. Ms. Pittman has had proven success teaching students at all levels of public-school education K-12. Ms. Pittman has been an active member of the Georgia Music Educators Association her entire career, serving the students of Georgia and assisting her colleagues in many capacities. She has served the Georgia Music Education Association as an All-State Choir Organizer, District Honor Chorus Organizer, and District IV Treasurer. She also serves as the membership chair for Georgia’s state ACDA chapter. In Newton County, she re-established the Newton County High School Honor Chorus. Ms. Pittman is also experienced in grant writing, and fundraising. She is currently a “Donors Choose Ambassador” where she assists other teachers with writing grants to earn money for their classrooms. A native of Hampton, GA, Ms. Pittman is a graduate of Lovejoy High School in Clayton County, GA. Upon graduation she began her teaching career by opening the choral program at Eddie White K-8 Academy. After growing the EWA program to become the largest in the county at the time, Ms. Pittman moved on to the high school level to rebuild the choral program at Alcovy High School in 2012. During her tenure at Alcovy her choirs consistently earned superior and excellent ratings at GMEA’s Large Group Performance Evaluations. The Alcovy Tiger Chorus has traveled to and performed in five states, with one of the most memorable performances being at Lincoln Center in New York City in the spring of 2016, and then at the University of Southern California and Disneyland in Los Angeles, CA in 2018. While at Alcovy, Ms. Pittman has served as the director of several extracurricular groups, advisor of the Tri-M Music Honor Society, and sponsor of the school’s state champion dance team. She also coordinated the graduation ceremony for her school, and she co-directed the annual school musicals. In 2017, she proudly represented Alcovy High School as the "Teacher of the Year.” Now at Campbell High School she is the director of three co-curricular music ensembles, the A Capella vocal group “Spartan Blue,” and serves as charter advisor to the Tri-M Music Honor Society. Ms. Pittman has accumulated vast experience working with choirs across the state of Georgia. She is a highly sought-after choral clinician, musical director, music education consultant, instructor, and adjudicator. She is very active as a soprano soloist and choral musician as a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus since 2011, and the Atlanta Women’s Chorus since 2020. Having performed with orchestras, choirs, and small vocal ensembles throughout her career as a musician, Ms. Pittman proudly continues to learn, grow, and develop as a musician, music researcher, and choral music pedagogue. She is a member of ACDA, GMEA, NAfME, NEA, Sigma Alpha Iota Music Fraternity, Inc., and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.

Dr. Alicia W. Walker is Director of Choral Studies at the University of South Carolina, where she directs the Concert Choir and the U of SC TTBB Choir, and supervises the graduate conducting program. Each year Dr. Walker travels to South Africa to teach continuing education for choral directors, and she is regularly invited to conduct and teach in England and in Taiwan. Hailed as a “dynamo on the podium,” Dr. Walker made her conducting debuts at Carnegie Hall in 2015, and at Lincoln Center in 2019. Her choirs have been selected to perform for SCMEA and for South Carolina’s ACDA conference. Dr. Walker’s pedagogy and professional interactions are marked by a commitment to excellence, collaboration, and inclusion.

An experienced music educator, Dr. Walker taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels, followed by appointments at the University of Georgia and the University of South Carolina, where she supervised Secondary Choral Music Education. She is a Past President of Southern Region ACDA and Georgia ACDA, and she developed ChorTransform, ACDA’s service-learning initiative for student chapters. Her focus on professional mentoring led Dr. Walker to found Facets,™ a leadership retreat for women conductors. In Columbia, she conducts a chamber choir of music educators called Limited Time Only, and she maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator. A long-time church musician, Dr. Walker has served churches in Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina, and she presently conducts the Chancel Choir at Shandon Presbyterian Church. She was a committee chair for the development of Celebrating Grace, a hymnal published in 2010, and is a contributing author for Sacred Choral Music Repertoire: Insight for Conductors. Dr. Walker was guest editor of the February 2021 Choral Journal, ACDA’s focus issue on pedagogy. Her research interests include conducting pedagogy, service-learning, and choral composers of the English Musical Renaissance. She is a Life Member of ACDA, and holds memberships in NAfME and NCCO.

Artistic and Executive Director Dr. Susan McMane is a world-renowned choral conductor specializing in treble choral music. In 2012, she became the founding director of the Young Women’s Choral Projects of San Francisco, where she conducts the auditioned chorus of young women from grades 7-12 and oversees a training chorus program for younger girls. From June 2001- March 2012, Dr. McMane was the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus where she achieved national and international acclaim for its concert, recording, and touring chorus. She has served on college music faculties of Saint Louis University, the University of North Dakota and San Francisco State, and was Founding Artistic Director and Conductor of the St. Louis Women’s Chorale.

Dr. McMane has prepared her choirs for performances with many leading symphonic conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Helmut Rilling, Robert Spano, Charles Dutoit, Nicholas McGegan, and Kurt Masur. In addition, she personally has conducted ensembles on tour nationally and internationally throughout Europe and Asia including France, Spain, Italy, England, Wales, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Japan, South Korea, and China. In 2011, she was invited to bring her chorus to Cuba, on a cultural exchange mission granted by the U.S. and Cuban governments.

Dr. McMane has won many awards for her work including three GRAMMY® Awards with the San Francisco Symphony and the 2007 “Symphony of Excellence Arts Award” from the Pacific Musical Society. In addition she won honors at the International Eisteddfod competition in Llangollen, Wales, in 1998 and that year was also named the “Music Educator of the Year” by the St. Louis Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

To promote and advance choral music for treble voices, Dr. McMane is responsible for commissioning over 20 new works from prominent composers such as Chen Yi, Tania Leon, Augusta Read Thomas, Frank La Rocca, David Conte, Alberto Grau, and many more. She is a two-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. She earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and holds two degrees in Vocal Performance.

Dr. Carolina Flores is a Professor of Music at Manchester Community College, CT, where she teaches a wide variety of courses in the only two-year nationally accredited music program in CT. Carolina was instrumental in achieving NASM accreditation for MCC. In addition to this position at MCC, she is a member of the Alignment Program Review Curriculum Committee for the State of CT, and the artistic chorale director of the Manchester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale in CT, having become the first female conductor of this organization since its founding.

Carolina has been awarded the 2015 Excellence of Teaching Award at MCC, the national 2016 NISOD Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2018 National Hispanic Heritage MCC Employee Award (State of CT). For over 15 years, she has served in many capacities at the Connecticut chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (CT-ACDA) including as president from 2013 to 2015.

Carolina grew up in Zaragoza, Spain, a city with a long history of musical traditions. There she learned how to play the organ and also attended the Superior Conservatory of Music obtaining a Bachelor degree in piano pedagogy. She was fortunate to have had the opportunity to sing with a choir lead by a remarkable conductor and renowned musicologist trained in Munich, José Vicente González Valle, who influenced her life in many ways, although she would only realize the extent many, many years later. Dr. Flores continued her piano pedagogy studies at the Royal Superior Conservatory of Music in Madrid. After obtaining her Master’s in Spain, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of Music. There, Carolina studied orchestral conducting and earned Bachelor and Master degrees in piano performance. During those years in the city, she was the choirmaster at three different churches, taught piano at the Third Street Music School Settlement, and played solo and chamber concerts including performances at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Cami Hall, Rockefeller Center, and as concerto soloist with the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Sixten Ehrling. She also served for three years as a tutor of Music Theory, and Ear- Training and Dictation, and was guest lecturer for a Graduate Piano Literature course (chapter on the piano music of Spain) at the Manhattan School of Music.

Carolina moved to CT when she was hired as the full-time Music Director at St. Theresa Church in Trumbull. During her first years in CT, Carolina kept teaching piano and performing solo & chamber music. She also sang professionally with ProArte Singers and was a member of the Yale Camerata, and the Yale Pro Musica chamber choir. She enjoyed working with choirs so much that it made her reconsider her career, leading to her decision to pursue a doctorate in choral conducting at The Hartt School, University of Hartford. While pursuing her D.M.A., Carolina built a large music program at St. Theresa, acquiring through the years two wonderful pipe organs, a grand piano, an extensive choral library, and the expansion of one choir to several choirs. Carolina has recently retired from this job to pursue her research interests and to be able to spend more time with her family.

A frequent lecturer, adjudicator, and clinician, Dr. Flores has previously directed the University Chorus at the University of Rhode Island, the Chamber Singers at Choate Rosemary Hill, and was the choir director at Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT. She also held the position of assistant director and accompanist for the New Haven Chorale in CT for four seasons as well as being their guest conductor in 2012 and served as artistic director of the Pioneer Valley Cappella Choir in Northampton, MA. From 2006 until 2015 Carolina was an Artist Teacher at The Hartt School, where she taught Choral Conducting, graduate Choral Literature, served as an independent graduate study advisor and staff accompanist in the vocal department, and directed the Hartt Chorale, the Hartt Camerata, and the Hartt Chamber singers including on several international tours. The choir for the last two tours was formed of The Hartt Tour Choir and members of the Manchester Community College Chorale.

Connie Drosakis is a twenty-six year teaching veteran (currently in her 13th year at Bak Middle School of the Arts) and a product of Palm Beach County Schools. Prior to teaching at the Bak MSOA, Ms. Drosakis taught at Christa McAuliffe Middle School for 14 years. She received the Bachelor and Master of Music Education/Choral Conducting degrees from Florida State University. At Florida State, Ms. Drosakis was the recipient of the Irvin Cooper Memorial Scholarship in Choral Music Education.

Her choruses have been selected to perform with the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of James Judd, and in festival choruses under the direction of Doreen Rao and Henry Leck. Under her directorship, all four Choral Groups have received straight superior ratings for eleven consecutive years at the Florida Vocal Association’s Music Performance Assessments. In addition her choruses have received high praise and several awards at middle and high school festivals and competitions both nationally and internationally. Choruses under her direction have also performed at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City at Southern Division and National Conventions of the American Choral Directors Association. Chorale, Bak’s premier chorale ensemble, performed at the 2007 National ACDA Convention in Miami and in 2011 her 7th and 8th Grade Girls Chorus performed at the National ACDA Convention in Chicago.

Ms. Drosakis is an active adjudicator and clinician for district evaluation festivals and county honor choirs throughout the states of Florida and Alabama. She has conducted All-State Choirs in North Carolina, Alabama and Missouri. In January of 2015, Ms. Drosakis will conduct the Florida All-State Women’s Chorus. She has served as the State Middle School Chair for the Florida Vocal Association and Membership Chair for the Florida State Chapter of ACDA. Ms. Drosakis holds membership in several professional organizations, including Florida Music Educator’s Association, Music Educator’s National Conference and American Choral Director’s Association. She currently serves as Vice-President of Florida ACDA.

Angelica Brooks is a choral director and music educator in Maryland. She serves at Bowie High School where she has four ensembles and also teaches drama and music theory. She was named PGCPS Teacher of the Year in 2019 and MMEA Outstanding Music Educator in 2021. Mrs. Brooks received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Vocal Performance at Bowie State University. While a student at Bowie State she served at the University’s chief soloist for all official events and received the Charlotte B. Robinson Award for Music Excellence.

She obtained her Masters of Music in Vocal Pedagogy from The Catholic University of America. While completing her Master degree, Angelica entered the Resident Teacher Program and joined the Prince George’s Public Schools System as a Vocal/General Music Specialist where she has served for the past 13 years. She has developed a reputation for building strong choral programs and advanced singing musicians. Her choirs have earned Superior Ratings at several choral festivals, competitions, and solo/ensemble festivals over the past 10 years.

Mrs. Brooks has also earned recognition for your leadership in music education. In 2015, she was a GRAMMY Music Educator of the Year Semifinalist. In 2019, she was awarded a Leadership in Education award by Bowie State University for her work in Music Education. Mrs. Brooks has been honored to serve the students of Maryland and her professional community as a guest conductor, festival adjudicator, mentor teacher, curriculum writer, and professional development presenter. Most recently she has served as a guest speaker and panelist for MMEA, MSDE, MAC-AOSA, and Crane School of music on topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Amidst all of these accomplishments, she still finds time to give back through TAP Online by giving free music lessons. Mrs. Brooks is currently pursuing her DMA at the University of Southern California in Music Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Corie Brown serves as Assistant Professor of Choral Music Education at San José State University. She leads the SJSU Concert and Treble Choirs, and brings diverse teaching experience in both public and community settings. Prior to graduate studies in Colorado and Oregon, then moving to California, Dr. Brown taught in Colombia with the Fundación Nacional Batuta from 2012–2014, where she aided in the creation of the organization’s choral department and mentored choir teachers throughout the country. She also taught in public schools in Chicago and Michigan.

As a mezzo-soprano, Dr. Brown has appeared with the Ad Astra Music Festival and Oregon Bach Festival Choirs, as well as the award-winning University of Oregon Chamber Choir, University of Colorado Boulder University Singers, and the prestigious Chicago Chorale. She has sung under the baton of Helmuth Rilling, Matthew Halls, Sharon Paul, and Andrea Ramsey, amongst others, and has toured internationally throughout Argentina, Colombia, and Europe.

As a conductor, Dr. Brown was a semi-finalist in the Southwest American Choral Directors Association Conducting Competition and enjoys performing everything from early music to contemporary works, especially by marginalized composers. She strives to elevate treble voices and repertoire, recently publishing a treble arrangement with Hal Leonard in the Andrea Ramsey Choral Series. Dr. Brown is active nationally and internationally as a clinician and guest conductor. She most recently served as faculty at the Kula Kākoʻo Virtual Choral Conducting Institute in Hawai’i, adjudicated the Festival Coral de Santander in Colombia, presented at the California State Music Educators Conference, and conducted the Ad Astra Music Festival High School Honor Choir in Kansas.

Dr. Brown holds degrees in Choral Music Education from Alma College, in Choral Conducting from the University of Oregon, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting and Literature from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, California Music Educators Association, and National Association for Music Education, and serves on the boards of the California Choral Directors Association and California Music Educators Association Bay Area.

Dr. Solveig Holmquist is the founder and artistic director of Festival Chorale Oregon. Under her leadership, the Chorale has developed a reputation for musical excellence throughout Western Oregon and in the international community. Festival Chorale Oregon has enjoyed performing tours through Germany, France, Scandinavia, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Spain. At home, FCO regularly performs major choral/ orchestral works for Willamette Valley audiences.

Dr. Holmquist, Western Oregon University Professor Emerita, recently retired after 18 years as director of Choral Studies. Her duties included conducting both the Concert choir and Chamber singers, and teaching conducting at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She continues to be involved in WOU's annual musicals. As a certified adjudicator, she is in demand as a clinician at numerous clinics, choral festivals and contests. She has conducted in Carnegie Hall with Festival Chorale Oregon and the WOU Chamber Singers as core ensembles five times since 1999. In 2013 she was guest conductor in New York City’s Lincoln Center.

From 1985 - 2013, Holmquist was an auditioned member of the Grammy-award winning Oregon Bach Festival Chorus, Helmuth Rilling, artistic director. Her professional affiliations include the American Choral Directors Association, in which she served as Oregon President from 2003-2005 and as President of the six-state Northwest Division from 2010 to 2012. She has also served as president of the Oregon Music Educators Association, and has provided educational seminars for the Oregon Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Dr. Holmquist majored in voice and organ at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, singing with the renowned St. Olaf Choir. She holds a Master’s degree in Music Education from Western Oregon University, and a DMA in Music Education and Choral Conducting from the University of Oregon.

Dr. Lynn M. Brinckmeyer is Professor of Music, Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication and Director of Choral Music Education at Texas State University. During 2006-2008 she served as President for The National Association for Music Education (formerly MENC). Other past offices include: President for the Northwest Division of MENC, Music Educators Journal Editorial Board, and Washington Music Educators Association General Music Curriculum Chair. In addition to chairing the Eastern Washington University Music Department for six years and conducting the EWU Concert Choir, Dr. Brinckmeyer received the Washington Music Educators Association Hall of Fame, the MENC Northwest Division Distinguished Service Award and Eastern New Mexico University’s Outstanding Alumni Award.

Dr. Brinckmeyer’s research initiatives focus on developing young voices, music from across the globe and music advocacy. She recently published Wander the USA with Warm-Ups!Other books include: The Wonder of Music with John Jacobson, Rhythm Rescue!, Wander the World with Warm-ups with Hal Leonard Publishing and Advocate for Music with Oxford University Press. She founded the Eastern Washington University Girls’ Chorus while teaching at EWU. She also served as Artistic Director for the South Hill Children’s Chorus in Spokane, Washington. Dr. Brinckmeyer is a co-founder and Artistic Director for the Hill Country Youth Chorus in San Marcos, Texas.

Dr. Brinckmeyer’s degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Education and Master of Music Education from Eastern New Mexico University, and a Ph.D. in Music Education from The University of Kansas. In New Mexico she taught elementary music and middle school choir, then moved to higher education in the Pacific Northwest. At Texas State University Dr. Brinckmeyer teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in choral music education, and she directs the Texas State treble ensemble, Aurora Voce. Each summer Dr. Brinckmeyer serves as a long time staff member for the World Music Drumming workshops. She has conducted all state choirs and honor choirs, lectured, presented master classes and performed in forty-nine states in the United States and 20+ countries, including China, Brazil, South Africa, Cuba, Peru and Australia.

Jo Scurlock-Dillard received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in 1975 from Stephen F. Austin State University. She taught Choral Music and Theatre in Texas and California for 35 years before retiring from the classroom. Jo is a Past President of the Texas Music Educators Association and she also served two years as the Vice President in charge of the Vocal Division. She has served in many Music Advisory Committees, such as: UIL Sight-reading Committee, UIL Prescribed Music List Committee, Chair of the SWACDA Repertoire and Standards Committee for Women’s Choirs, Chair of the TCDA Ways and Means Committee and the UIL Music Advisory. In 2000, Jo was named as the recipient of the Southwestern Bell UIL Sponsor of the Year for her work with students in Choir. She was also named as SFASU’s Music Alumnus of the year. In 2011, she received the Texas Choral Director’s Association’s Choral Excellence Award.

Choirs under Jo’s Direction have been chosen to perform for the Texas Music Educator’s Association, Southwestern Division of the American Choral Association, and the National American Choral Director’s Association Conventions. She is active as an All-State/Region conductor. Her choirs have also been invited to sing Paris, Budapest, Munich, Vienna, Salzburg, Florence, Florence, Rome, Amsterdam and Bruges. Jo Continues to be active as a Choral conductor, advocate, clinician, and consultant. She also serves Texas Tech University and Texas State University as a Student Teacher University Supervisor and Teacher mentor/consultant to many other schools and districts. Currently, she serves on the music review board for Walton Music Publications.

Dr. Kym Scott, Director of Choral Activities, West Virginia University, graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Music from the University of Southern California. While at USC she conducted the USC Thornton Oriana Women’s Chorus as well as several performances with both the USC Thornton Concert Choir and the USC Thornton Chamber Singers. In 2013, she conducted members of the USC choirs in several performances with The Rolling Stones in Los Angeles and Anaheim during their “50 and counting” world tour. She finished her time at USC with a summer 2014 tour to China and South Korea, performing with the USC Thornton Chamber Singers and presenting lectures on Australian choral music at the World Choral Symposium in Seoul. Since relocating to West Virginia in 2014, Dr. Scott has presented lectures at state and regional conferences including the West Virginia ACDA and MEA conferences, and the Southern Division ACDA conference. She also conducted the West Virginia All-State High School Honor Choir in January 2016.

An Australian native, she received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and a Master of Music degree from the University of Queensland. Before moving to California in 2011, Dr. Scott taught choral music at the Brisbane Girls Grammar School and contemporary music and theory at the Metropolitan South Institute of TAFE. Kym regularly travels back to Australia where she is highly sought after as an adjudicator and clinician.

Dr. Susan Medley is Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Music at Washington & Jefferson College. She joined the W&J faculty in 2004 and conducts the W&J Choir and Camerata Singers, and teaches conducting and music theory. She also serves as the advisor for W&J’s Epsilon Zeta chapter of Delta Omicron International Music Fraternity. In addition to her duties at W&J, Medley serves as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Concert Chorale. She was Associate Conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh from 2008 to 2012 and Music Director and Conductor of the Junior Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh from 2009 to 2013. Prior to coming to W&J, she was Associate Director of Education at Carnegie Hall in New York City and founding conductor/clinician of the Carnegie Hall High School Choral Festivals. She also held the position of Music Director of The Central City Chorus, a 60-voice community chorus that performed three annual concerts in midtown Manhattan.

Under Medley’s direction, the W&J Camerata Singers have appeared by invitation at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City, on the Great Artists concert series at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, at the 2009 MENC Eastern Division Conference, and at the 2010 State Conference of the Pennsylvania Music Education Association. In June 2010, the W&J Camerata Singers became the first winners of The American Prize in Choral Performance, College/University Division. The Junior Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh followed suit in 2011, winning The American Prize in Choral Performance, High School Division. Medley’s choral work has taken her to Malaysia, where she served as guest conductor of the 2006 Kuala Lumpur Young Singers Choral Festival and led workshops for choirs and conductors throughout the country. The recipient of the 2011 PMEA District 1 Citation of Excellence Award, Medley holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting with a cognate in music theory from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She holds an M.M. in Accompanying from the University of Akron and a B.M. in Music Education summa cum laude from Kent State University, where she studied piano with Naumburg Award-winning pianist Margaret Baxtresser.

Dr. Erin Colwitz has been Director of Choral Activities at Northern Michigan University since August 2015, where she conducts the Arts Chorale and the University Choir. Under her leadership, NMU choirs have toured Finland, Austria, and Poland, as well as various venues in the United States. She is also Music Director of the Marquette Choral Society.

Dr. Colwitz is a frequent guest conductor, lecturer, contest adjudicator and choral clinician throughout the United States. As a clinician and lecturer, Dr. Colwitz presents at conferences at the state, regional, national, and international levels, including at the Athens Institute of Research. In 2014, Dr. Colwitz served as guest conductor and clinician at a collegiate choral festival in Bangkok and Chiangmai, Thailand, with conductor William Dehning under the auspices of the US Embassy.

She is currently President-Elect of the Michigan state chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, and she has served ACDA as the AL-ACDA Repertoire & Standards Chair for Community Choirs and Youth and Student Activities. Dr. Colwitz is also a member of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO), the International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM), the College Music Society (CMS), Delta Kappa Gamma and the Pi Kappa Lambda Honor Society.

Before coming to Michigan, Dr. Colwitz served as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. While there, her choirs toured domestically and twice internationally and were selected to sing at the Alabama state music education conference. She received numerous grants to fund research in choral music, including from the UAH Humanities Center to fund British composer Tarik O'Regan’s residency. As a result, Dr. Colwitz’s choirs performed the U.S. premiere of O’Regan’s Martyr and the world premiere of his new arrangement of Triptych. Another grant brought Dr. Colwitz to South Africa for research on the African church music tradition in rural areas. Dr. Colwitz earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Southern California in choral music, studying conducting with William Dehning, David Wilson, Magen Solomon, and Claire McCoy. At USC, she was awarded a full teaching assistantship as conductor of the Thornton Oriana Choir, the University’s only women’s chorus, a post she held for three years. She also sang with the award-winning Thornton Chamber Choir, including tours in France, Belgium, and East Asia.

Dr. Colwitz’s doctoral treatise was a critical analysis of Dominick Argento’s A Toccata of Galuppi’s. This twelve-tone work was part of the 2003 Grammy-nominated recording of Argento’s music, Walden Pond, by the Dale Warland Singers, for which Dr. Colwitz herself sang as a member. While with that ensemble, she performed with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Robert Shaw, Edo de Waart, and Hugh Wolff.

Dr. Colwitz served as a member of the choral music faculty at California State University, Fullerton, where she conducted the women’s choir and taught music education courses. She was also Director of Music at St. Victor Catholic Church in West Hollywood; sang regularly with John Alexander and the Pacific Chorale in Santa Ana; and sang with the Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the batons of Carl St. Clair, Giancarlo Guerrero, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Gustavo Dudamel.

Dr. Karen Kenaston-French is in her 11th year as Associate Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas Arlington, where she conducts the A Cappella Choir, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting, and heads the Vocal Area. Under her direction the UTA A Cappella Choir has performed at TMEA, SWACDA, and national ACDA conventions and has made appearances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Texas Ballet Theatre, the Fort Worth Chorale, and the Rolling Stones.

Prior to her arrival at UTA, Dr. Kenaston-French served as Director of Choral Activities at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she led the Chamber Singers in two appearances at the Tennessee Music Education Association state conference, and in master classes with Chanticleer, Cantus, and Libby Larsen. She taught conducting at Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas, and was director of music ministries at Plymouth Park United Methodist Church in Irving, Texas from 1986-1998.

Dr. Kenaston-French has been guest conductor for choirs in Colorado, Michigan and Tennessee, for numerous TMEA region choirs, for the American Festival of the Arts (AFA), and is a frequent clinician and adjudicator of high school choirs across the state. She serves as artistic director of the highly successful All-State Choir Camp, One Last Look Workshop, and the Area Workshop at UTA, which collectively attract more than 500 students each year. She continues to share her experience in church music as a faculty member for SMU’s Church Music Summer Seminar and as clinician for church choirs. Beginning with the 2019-2020 season Dr. Kenaston-French will take over as Artistic Director/Conductor of the Ft. Worth Chorale, following Jerry McCoy as only the fifth conductor in the organization’s 56-year history.

Dr. Kenaston-French holds a B.A. in vocal performance from West Virginia Wesleyan College, M.M. and M.S.M. degrees in choral conducting from Southern Methodist University, and a D.M.A. in choral conducting from the University of North Texas, where she was named outstanding graduate student in conducting and ensembles and the Pi Kappa Lambda outstanding doctoral student. She studied conducting with Jerry McCoy, Mel Ivey, Lloyd Pfautsch, Jane Marshall, and Larry Parsons, and in 2011 was a conductor for the Choral/Orchestral Master Class of the Oregon Bach Festival, under Helmut Rilling and Jeffrey Kahane. Vocal studies include graduate work with Lynn Eustis at UNT and Linda Baer at SMU. Her article “The Teachings of Jean‐Antoine Bérard” was published in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Journal of Singing in November 2009. She sang in the Dallas Symphony Chorus from 1993-2003, and was selected by national audition to sing in the first Robert Shaw Festival Chorus at Carnegie Hall in 1991.

With more than 30 years of choral education experience, Mia Hill Miller’s dedication and enthusiasm for working with young people is widely recognized. In addition to directing PYC, Mia is a popular adjudicator and clinician. She has conducted the Oregon Music Educators Association, All-State Elementary Choir, Middle School Girl’s Honor Choir, Pacific University’s “Music in May,” and many high school clinics and festivals.

Mia holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music from the University of Oregon. She studied further in Stuttgart, Germany while singing with outstanding choral directors Helmuth Rilling and Frieder Bernius. She continues conducting studies in workshops with Dr. Rodney Eichenberger. Mia is a member of American Choral Directors Association(ACDA) and has served as membership chair for Oregon and co-Chair of the Middle School Honor Choir. Last Spring, Mia received the Oregon Symphony's 2016 Schnitzer Wonder Award. This award honors an individual or organization that directly works to build community through the next generation of artists and/or student musicians. In 2003, she founded Pacific Youth Choir, which has grown to include 300 singers in 12 choirs. PYC in residence at Trinity Cathedral has gained a reputation for quality that has led to continuing collaborations with Oregon’s top musical organizations including: Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Eugene Symphony, Oregon Ballet Theater, Whitebird Dance, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Trinity Choir, and Thomas Lauderdale and Pink Martini in performances and recordings. PYC has been honored to perform at ACDA conventions in 2008 in Vancouver, BC, the 50th Anniversary National ACDA Convention in Oklahoma City, March 2009, and the 2012 convention in Seattle, WA and the upcoming 2018 Northwest ACDA convention to be held in Portland.

Kumu Lauren Kanoelani Chang Williams-Note from Galván: I was fortunate to be introduced to Lauren by Nola Nahulu many years ago. I was mesmerized by Lauren’s dancing, and thrilled to watch her teach hula. We have worked together several times at festivals where I have watched her teach the Hawaiian language pronunciation, culture, and hula. She is fantastic. When I conducted the Western Division Middle School Treble Honor Choir, she taught hula, explained the significance of the text of the Hawaiian composition that Justin Ka’upu arranged, and danced at the concert. A wonderful culture bearer with a love for music and humanity.

Kumu Lauren Kanoelani Chang Williams is a member of the Music Faculty at Punahou School in Honolulu, where she teaches Hawaiian Music, Hula, ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i, Choir, and General Music. She previously served as Choir director and Kumu Hula (Hula Master) at Sacred Hearts Academy and the Hawaiʻi Youth Opera Chorus. Williams is a graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and has served as a board member for the American Choral Directors Association of Hawaiʻi. She is a trained Kumu Hula under Leimomi I Maldonado as well as Kimo Alama Keaulana and has led her own hula school, Hālau Nā Pua Hala Kūnou i ke Kai, for the past 11 years. Besides traditional applications of hula, Williams has created innovative hula choreography for the Faure Requiem and the debut of “Raise Hawaiki” a symphony composed for the Polynesian Voyaging Canoe, Hōkūle’a. She has taught workshops in hula for choral festivals and conferences in Washington, Nevada, Utah, Illinois, China, and Japan.

Noted for her “directorial command” and “technical expertise,” conductor Dr. Beth Willer is recognized as a bold, 21st-century artist with her finger on the pulse of the vocal ensemble art. Her commitment to expanding and deepening the repertoire for vocal ensembles through creative collaboration and culturally-relevant programming can be seen in her work with professional and student ensembles alike. A champion of new music, Willer frequently collaborates with established and emerging composers, including significant projects with David Lang, Julia Wolfe, George Benjamin, Kati Agócs, Kareem Roustom, James Kallembach, Shawn Kirchner, and Jessica Meyer.

As founder and artistic director of Boston’s Lorelei Ensemble, Willer has led the octet to international acclaim, performing at celebrated venues across the country, including Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tanglewood Music Center, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. Committed to fulfilling Lorelei’s mission to elevate and expand the repertoire for women’s voices, she frequently initiates collaborations with composers from the U.S. and abroad, leading the ensemble in more than 60 world, U.S., and regional premieres since its founding. Nationwide performances in 2019-20 featured the world premiere of Jessica Meyer’s I long and seek after (winner of the 2019 Chorus America Dale Warland Commissioning Award). Recent recordings include David Lang’s love fail (Cantaloupe, 2020) and Impermanence (Sono Luminus, 2018) featuring motets of Guillaume Du Fay, selections from the Turin Manuscript and the Codex Calixtinus, and the premiere recording of Peter Gilbert’s Tsukimi.

Lorelei Ensemble maintains a robust national touring schedule, including recent collaboration with Grammy-nominated ensembles A Far Cry and Cantus. In 2020-21, Lorelei Ensemble is proud to present the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story, in performances with five co-commissioning orchestras: the Nashville Symphony (Giancarlo Guerrero), the San Francisco Symphony (Guerrero), the Chicago Symphony (Marin Alsop), the National Symphony Orchestra (Gianandrea Noseda), and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Guerrero). Written for Lorelei Ensemble to commemorate the centennial of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, Her Story is the latest in a series of Wolfe’s compositions highlighting monumental and turbulent moments in American history and culture. Additional Lorelei appearances in 2020-21 include The National Gallery, Eastman School of Music, Princeton University, Duke University, and a performance of Holst’s The Planets at the Tanglewood Music Center with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Thomas Adès). Future projects include work with choreographer Renée Jaworski (Pilobolus), Grammy-nominated composer Christopher Cerrone, video artist Hannah Wasileski, and a trio of composer-performers: Ken Thomson (Bang on a Can), Nathalie Joachim (Eighth Blackbird), and Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion).

As guest conductor, Willer has been privileged to lead premiere ensembles from across the country, including performances with Seraphic Fire, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, New York Baroque Incorporated, and Roomful of Teeth. Symphonic work includes performance and recording of standard repertoire and multiple world and U.S. premieres with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Andris Nelsons), the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (Stefan Asbury), Boston Modern Orchestra Project (Gil Rose), and Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute (Ken-David Masur).

Prior to joining the Peabody faculty, Willer served as director of choral activities at Bucknell University, where she led the University Choir and Camerata and taught courses in conducting, chamber music, arts entrepreneurship, and choral music education. Previous academic appointments include positions at Harvard University and The Boston Conservatory. A passionate music educator, Willer has led numerous young artist ensembles, including choruses at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute, New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School, the Boston Arts Academy, The Walnut Hill School, and Eau Claire Memorial High School. An active clinician and master teacher, Willer enjoys frequent engagements with high school and collegiate ensembles across the country. Willer holds graduate degrees in conducting from Boston University (DMA and MM), and an undergraduate degree in music education and trumpet performance from Luther College (BM). Teachers include Ann Howard Jones, Weston Noble, Mark Shapiro, David Hoose, and Bruce Hangen.

Dr. Shannon Jeffreys is Associate Professor and Director of Choral Activities at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. Her focus is the Southern Chorale, teaching in the undergraduate and graduate conducting and music education curriculums, along with mentoring Southern Gentlemen and Southern Sirens barbershop ensembles. She has led these choirs in three international choral competitions where the choirs won significant awards. In 2016, Southern Chorale won the grand prize in the Laurea Mundi Budapest in both the spiritual and mixed choir categories. Choirs under her direction have also been featured at multiple state conferences and most recently performing on the national conference of the National Association for Music Education and the National Collegiate Choral Organization’s National Conference.

Dr. Jeffreys maintains an active schedule as a presenter, adjudicator, lecturer and guest conductor from secondary to collegiate institutions throughout the United States and serves on competition juries in Europe. She serves on the Artistic Committee for Music for All National Choral Festival and recently published in ACDA’s ChorTeach. This summer, Dr. Jeffreys served on the adjudicating panel for the Laurea Mundi Budapest and joined the faculty of Harmony University with the Barbershop Harmony Society. Before coming to Georgia Southern, Jeffreys served as Director of Vocal Studies at Erskine College and Theological Seminary and Director of Vocal Music at Andrew College. She holds degrees in music performance and conducting from Birmingham Southern College, the University of Mississippi, and the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Alyssa Cossey is Assistant Professor of Choral Music and Music Education at the University of Arizona where she conducts the University Community Chorus, Coro, and the Wildcat Choir, teaches undergraduate Methods and Techniques for Secondary Vocal Music Education and Introduction to Music Education as well as graduate seminars: Techniques for the Choral Teacher-Conductor, Historical Research in Music Education, and Teaching Music in Higher Education. Dr. Cossey is also responsible for overseeing student teachers and advising Conducting and Music Education graduate students. In addition to her teaching responsibilities she is in high demand as an adjudicator, clinician, guest conductor and presenter and has presented at state and regional conferences in Alaska, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, New Mexico, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Texas. In 2018 she presented her session, “Adopt, Adapt, Improve: Utilizing Effective Choral Techniques in the Wind Band Rehearsal” at the Midwest Clinic: International Band & Orchestra Conference, in Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Cossey holds a DMA in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University, an MM in Conducting from California State University, Fullerton, and a BA from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. As a Los Angeles native, she sang in the premiere women’s chorus, Vox Femina Los Angeles, under the direction of Dr. Iris Levine, and has been invited to sing at venues including the Hollywood Bowl, the Pantages Theatre, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall with renowned conductors and composers including John Williams, Grant Gershon, and James Conlon. She is also an inaugural member of the professional-level women's choir mirabai, which sings and tours under the direction of Dr. Sandra Snow, and can be heard on their debut CD “Ecstatic Songs,” released in March 2018.

In addition to conducting and teaching, Dr. Cossey has a passion for investigative historical research. Her article on Haydn’s secular canons, “Adding Canons to the Canon: Franz Joseph Haydn’s Die Weltlichen Kanons,” was featured in the August 2018 issue of the Choral Journal. Previous research areas have included unpublished documents on the commission and premiere performance of Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, and in 2018 she visited the Britten-Pears Foundation in Aldeburgh, Suffolk to review his original manuscripts and complete her comparative study of Britten’s written scores to his conducted performances. Dr. Cossey holds memberships with the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, the National Collegiate Choral Organization, the College Music Society, and the National Association for Music Education. She currently serves as the Arizona ACDA Collegiate Repertoire and Resources Coordinator and is a member of the Western Region American Choral Directors Association Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee. Previously, Dr. Cossey taught middle and high school choir in the L.A. area for nearly a decade. During her tenure her choirs consistently received Superior ratings at festival, with invitations to perform at the state and national level, and enrollment in the her programs more than doubled in size under her leadership.

Dr. Christine Howlett conducts the Vassar College Women’s Chorus, Vassar College Choir, and teaches music theory and voice. Her choruses have sung at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and have toured overseas in Cuba, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Turkey, and Uganda. The Vassar College Women’s Chorus performed at the National Collegiate Choral Association and ACDA Eastern Division Conferences. She is a regular guest conductor and chorus master for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Her edition of Francesco Gasparini’s Mass for Five Voices was published in 2019 by A-R Editions. Howlett served as Chair of the Music Department from 2016-2020 and will return as Chair in Fall 2021. Under the Dean of Studies office, she has served multiple terms on the Committee on Leaves and Privileges and the Fellowships Committee since 2009.

Christine Howlett is the Artistic Director of Cappella Festiva, an auditioned choral ensemble with a 45-year history of performing in the Hudson Valley. She is the Past-President of the New York American Choral Directors Association, which supports over 600 choral directors statewide. A supporter of contemporary music, Howlett has commissioned and premiered choral works by notable composers, including Libby Larsen and Tarik O’Regan. In collaboration with Patrick Wood Uribe, violin, and Holly Chatham, piano, the trio released Love Raise Your Voice which contains commissioned works for soprano, violin, and piano by Carson Cooman, Tarik O’Regan, Richard Wilson, and others. She studied Vocal Performance at the University of Toronto and earned a Master’s Degree in Early Music Voice Performance and a D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from Indiana University.

Dr. Yoojin Muhn serves as the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she directs the UTSA Chamber Singers, Concert Choir, and teaches choral conducting for both undergraduate and graduate students. Prior to coming to Texas, Dr. Muhn has served as the Artistic Director at Tucson Masterworks Chorale in Tucson, Arizona and directed the Oriana Women’s Chorus, and led the Concert Choir as an assistant director at the University of Southern California. She recently has been invited to the Missouri Choral Directors Association as the All-State honor choir conductor and headliner and appointed as a choral conducting faculty at the Music Across the Pond, a summer music program in England.

Dr. Muhn received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Music with honors from the University of Southern California, the Master of Music degrees in Choral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati and in Sacred Music from Westminster Choir College where she graduated with distinction, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Composition from SookMyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea.

In her eleventh year as the Evelyn Barry Director of Choral Music, Dr. Lisa Graham conducts the Wellesley College Choir, and Chamber Singers as well as teaching academic courses in the music department. In 2004 she founded the Choral Scholars Program, consisting of scholarship students selected to study conducting and choral music. Under her direction, the Wellesley College Choirs have toured internationally to England, Wales, Canada, Spain, and Italy in addition to domestic tours annually. The Wellesley Choirs regularly perform in the Boston area, on professional concert series and in collaboration with other choirs nationally.

An active participant in the musical life of the greater Boston area, she is also the Music Director of the Metropolitan Chorale. Additionally, she is a founding member and the President in the National Collegiate Choral Conductor’s Organization, has served as the Women's Choir Repertoire and Standards Chair for the Massachusetts American Choral Director's Association, and is an active guest conductor, clinician, and festival adjudicator. Prior to her arrival in the Boston area, Dr. Graham was on the faculty at California State University Northridge, where she conducted the Women’s Chorale. She has directed choirs at Sonoma State University, performed in and directed productions at Cinnabar Opera Theater in Northern California, taught at the University of Southern California where she earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees, while serving as Assistant Conductor to the USC Thornton Chamber Choir under the direction of Dr. William Dehning.

Dr. Loida Pineda is a versatile choral music educator, enthusiastic about choral music from diverse traditions and cultures, as she is about nurturing competent and compassionate choral music teachers. She believes music education is the endeavor of forming lifelong independent music-makers as well as caring and responsible citizens for the betterment of society and the world. Throughout her career, she has taught international, minority, special, underprivileged, and music and non-music students, from 2 to 80 years old, in varied educational settings and in two different countries and languages. Dr. Pineda’s choral teaching career spans 25 years, during which she has directed ensembles of various natures: children’s, youth and adult; auditioned and non-auditioned; college-, church- and community-based; and comprising singers with heterogeneous musical backgrounds both in the U.S. and Mexico, her home country.

During her time in Mexico, Dr. Pineda’s advocacy for choral music education led her to initiate various choral ensembles, including the children’s and young adult choirs in her home church, the choir of Mexican Baptist Theological Seminary – Merida Campus and the “Lux Aeterna” auditioned community choir. She also founded the department of music in the Mexican Baptist Theological Seminary in Merida, Yucatan and designed a degree program in musical direction for church music leaders. Responding to the nonexistent music education curriculum in the public school system, she created an after-school music program to offer high-quality music education for children ages 4 to 12. During these years, Dr. Pineda also performed frequently as a soprano in her church and in other venues where she was invited as guest soloist.

She first came to the United States in 2002 for graduate work in the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. Throughout her studies at Southwestern, Dr. Pineda received substantial training from experts in varied important Christian musical traditions, such as psalmody, hymnody, praise and worship music, and shape-note singing. As a member of the 100+ member Fort Worth Symphony Festival Chorus she deeply explored performance practice in major works from the Baroque to the Romantic periods and assisted with sectional rehearsals of these works. She also studied and performed music from folk and African American traditions. Dr. Pineda’s final recital involved choir and orchestra and included music from G. Gabrieli, Schütz, Buxtehude, Mozart, Mack Wilberg, John Ness Beck, and Gwyneth Walker. Her thesis involved a comprehensive analysis of this repertoire. As a whole, her experience at Southwestern gave Dr. Pineda a robust background in sacred music, which she has vastly programmed with her choirs.

Although formally trained in the classical tradition, meaningful experiences in her own culture’s music, alongside rich exposure to Broadway musicals, jazz, spirituals, gospel songs, and European, Central and South American folk music during her childhood sparked Dr. Pineda’s pronounced interest in diverse choral music. But it was her experience of world music and teaching methodologies in the Indiana University International Vocal Ensemble that consolidated her commitment to world music education. Through specialized training in world music and vocal jazz, Dr. Pineda has thoughtfully engaged with this body of repertoire, taught it to her collegiate ensembles, and brought important discussions on this topic to her music education classes. She has particularly promoted Mexican choral music, which is underrepresented in the US, while Mexican culture is strongly represented in music classrooms. Dr. Pineda’s research support her advocacy by exploring pedagogical approaches to prepare choral music teachers for world music education. She has presented her research at NAfME research national conference, Big Ten Academic Alliance conferences, IMEA, and ICDA. Additionally, Dr. Pineda advocates for a diversified music curriculum through her membership in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access Committee of the Iowa Music Educators Association.

Dr. Pineda has been an active choral director in the past seven years. During her doctoral studies at Indiana University, she was the assistant director of the IU International Vocal Ensemble and later, the director of the community-based Bloomington Peace Choir, bringing Mexican and Latin American repertoire to both choirs. In the last three years, she directed Indiana State University’s leading auditioned ensemble, The Sycamore Singers, with which she performed a wide array of music from the sacred and secular, classical, vocal jazz and Mexican choral music traditions. Last year, as interim Director of Choral Activities at Simpson College, she directed the non-auditioned College Choir and the auditioned Chamber Singers and hosted the annual Simpson College Honor Choir, being a clinician for the event. Dr. Pineda’s choral experience also includes her artistic leadership to specialized choral events, being in charge of all planning, logistics, collaborations, and conducting. Examples of these events are the renowned Indiana State University Madrigal Dinners and the Simpson College Annual Festival of Lessons and Carols, the latter of which entailed two multi-ensemble performances, involving three choirs, soloists, orchestra, organ and piano.

Dr. Pineda holds a bachelor’s degree in tourism, a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in marketing from educational institutions in Mexico. After doing coursework for the Master of Arts in Church Music, she completed the requirements to earn her Master of Music with a conducting concentration from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. In summer of 2020, she earned her Doctorate in Music Education with a specialization in choral music and a minor in voice from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she is currently a visiting assistant professor of music education. Dr. Pineda has relevant training in piano, guitar and voice. Alongside her experience directing choirs, she has taught a wide array of music classes, such as music for early childhood and elementary children, private voice (ages 8 to 70), choral music education courses, conducting (undergrad and grad levels) and music education courses for undergrad, master’s and doctoral students. She has taught workshops in choral music and choral music education to students in Mexico, besides workshops in Mexican choral music to choral music teachers in the US. She truly hopes to use her multi-faceted musical training and choral expertise to honor cultural diversity through her performing, conducting, teaching, and research.

International performing artist, author, and composer Dr. Tish Oney tours worldwide as a symphony pops and big band soloist, jazz vocalist, voice pedagogue, and musicologist. An avid arranger and composer, Oney has arranged several hundred pieces for jazz combo including contemporary jazz, Great American Songbook standards, and her originals. An esteemed conductor, she often works with professional, university, church or community choirs, vocal jazz ensembles, and solo singers as a guest clinician and master teacher.

Tish produced her fifth major recording project in 2019–this time with John Chiodini (guitar), Chuck Berghofer (bass) and Ray Brinker (drums). This jazz album, The Best Part, is comprised of new original songs by contemporary jazz composers, including three never-released songs with lyrics by jazz diva Peggy Lee. Each of Oney’s albums including Songs From the Heart, Sweet Youth, Dear Peg, and Forever Friend, were honored by the Recording Academy in several categories including “Song of the Year”, “Record of the Year”, “Album of the Year”, “Best Jazz Voice Album”, and “Best Improvised Solo”.

Oney has performed and/or recorded with scores of renowned jazz artists and has headlined at hundreds of performance venues worldwide. She was featured as a big band/symphony soloist in the PBS-broadcast concert recorded at Galen Center in Los Angeles: “We Love Ella! A Tribute to the First Lady of Song.” She has performed as soloist with Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Williamsburg Symphony, Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphoria, the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors, Army Voices, Army Blues (Pershing’s Own), and other outstanding ensembles. She has headlined at international jazz festivals, Las Vegas casinos, and major stages throughout the world. She has appeared as headlining performer at many jazz hotspots including The Jazz Bakery (Los Angeles), The Jazz Corner (Hilton Head Island), Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, and the off-Broadway Triad Theatre (New York). An experienced film, stage, and television actress, Oney imbues her live performances with dramatic power and warmth.

Dr. Oney was honored in 2016 to win the Jazz Artist/Group of the Year award from the South Carolina Music Awards, and in 2015 her high school honored her among the inaugural five ‘Graduates of Distinction.’ She was lauded in the book The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide authored by jazz critic Scott Yanow. She was also honored as a USC Winter Scholar for her scholarly activity, and was named a Robert G. Boehmler Visiting Artist at Ithaca College School of Music. A recipient of The Diane Warren Award, Dr. Oney earned two initiations (by faculty at both IC and USC) into national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda for her musical excellence. Dr. Oney earned her doctorate with honors from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, and a Master of Music degree with honors in Voice Performance from Ithaca College.

In addition to her full performing and recording career, Dr. Oney has served as a professor of music at several major universities and colleges, most recently as Coordinator of Music, Director of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music, Director of Voice, and Director of Choral Activities. Several of her former voice students have enjoyed major careers on Broadway, as well as in opera, jazz and commercial music. Considered an expert in multi-genre singing, Dr. Oney has served the National Association of Teachers of Singing as a workshop presenter and master teacher of jazz, classical, opera, music theatre, and commercial styles. She teaches online voice lessons for professional and pre-professional singers throughout the United States and abroad.

As critically-acclaimed musicologist and author of Peggy Lee: A Century of Song, Tish enjoys opportunities to travel and share her knowledge as part of the official Peggy Lee 100 worldwide centennial campaign. She was honored to be invited as musicologist/artist to the Grammy Museum panel discussion and toast for Lee’s 100th birthday (May 26, 2020). Following the worldwide acclaim for her book, Tish has been a guest on international talk shows “q with Tom Power” broadcast on the CBC, NPR, PRI, and Sirius XM, as well as “The Daily with Dave Hodgson” on Talk Radio Europe (broadcast to 120 countries). She is a frequent guest on talk radio, podcasts, and television, and will be hosting her own podcast, “The Singer’s Muse” on WGJC in Greenville beginning November 2020. She is currently authoring another book for Rowman & Littlefield, Jazz Voice: A Guide to Singing Pedagogy. A prolific jazz journalist and contributing author to The Journal of Singing, JazzEd Magazine, and Classical Singer Magazine, Oney writes a column titled “Anatomy of a Standard,” for All About Jazz. Her diverse artistic talents combine to form an outstanding performing artist-pedagogue with exceptional technique, improvisational skill, and expertise.

Kalena Bovell-Note from Galván: Kalena is an orchestral conductor. We need to collaborate and have people from the orchestral world share wisdom with us. She has many topics to present that would be useful to the choral world.

With her distinctive voice as Maestra, speaker, and poet, Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell has earned praise as “one of the brightest stars in the world of classical music.” (Channel 3 News, Connecticut). Her twin tenets of musical excellence and community access have left their mark on orchestras across North America, and govern her current appointments as Assistant Conductor to the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony.

Bovell enjoyed a fruitful 2020 calendar year that included her international conducting debut, leading the Chineke! Orchestra in concert featuring composer Adolfus Hailstork’s “Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed”—a European premiere. As the arts transition to a new post-COVID landscape in 2021, Bovell eagerly anticipates conducting engagements that include her official MSO concert debut as well as a debut performance with the Sewanee Music Festival, with several other collaborative ventures yet to be announced. As a speaker, she appeared at the Sewanee Winterfest program in January as a guest clinician and will join the SphinxConnect 2021: UNITY Conference.

Since making her professional debut as the Chicago Sinfonietta’s Assistant Conductor in 2015, Bovell went on to hold cover conducting roles with both the St. Louis Symphony and Hartford Symphony before becoming the Music Director at the Civic Orchestra of New Haven for the 2018-2019 season. During her tenure, she not only elevated the musicality of the Civic Orchestra, but also diversified its repertoire and increased the size of its roster. Further, she made her mark on the region through numerous guest conducting appearances, including with the Hartford Opera Theater, conducting two short operas in its annual “New in November” festival.

Prior to her current appointment with the Memphis Symphony, Bovell debuted as guest conductor in a memorable 2019 performance with Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr. Her relationship with the MSO dates back to 2016, when she served as Assistant Conductor for former Music Director Mei-Ann Chen’s farewell concerts. Coming to classical music later than many of her contemporaries, much of Bovell’s artistic philosophy stems from her unorthodox journey to conducting. Though Kalena showed promise as a violinist, a lack of musical resources meant her first private lesson would come at 18 years old. Her experience far behind the typical conservatory-trained musician, Kalena found a new home as a conductor, and worked six jobs to fund the many plane tickets, workshops, and conducting lessons required to excel.

Now several years into her career on the podium, Bovell has sought to share her unique path to becoming a professional conductor, a topic she has spoken about to the BBC, the League of American Orchestras, Tennessee Music Education Association, and the III International Women Conductor’s Symposium, among many other radio, webinar and podcast appearances. A Los Angeles native, Bovell was previously named a finalist for the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, a recognition given to talented female leaders in the conducting field. She received a Master of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma in Orchestral Conducting from The Hartt School, where she studied with Edward Cumming, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education from the College of the Performing Arts at Chapman University In addition to conducting, Bovell is a published author, releasing her first poetry book titled “Dear Soul...” in 2009. She has increasingly interwoven her poetry with her music career, collaborating with Rob McClure’s Conductor Cam series in 2020 to perform her poem “Tethered Voices.” Kalena makes her home in Memphis, Tennessee, where she enjoys cooking, writing poetry, weight training, and trying new pizza places.

Dr. Catherine Roma (DMA Choral Conducting, College-Conservatory of Music, 1989) believes choral singing is a path to justice, inclusion and love. Roma founded her first women’s choir in 1974 (Madison, WI), founded Anna Crusis Women’s Choir in Philadelphia (1975), and founded and directed MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir for 30 years (1983-2013). Roma believes that commissioning music, especially by women composers, with texts that touch our lives, coupled with insightful repertoire selection and artful programming, are all indispensable tools for the choral conductor. Roma recently retired from Wilmington, a small Quaker college, where she was professor of music for 25 years. Through her association with Wilmington College and their dedication to prison education, Roma founded UMOJA Men’s Chorus at Warren Correctional Institution (1993). UMOJA won gold in the Spirituals and Gospel categories at the 7th World Choir Games (July 2012, Cincinnati) when three international judges came to the prison to hear them compete. UMOJA recorded three CDs, rewarding local charities with over $5,000 from the proceeds. Roma served as minister of music at St. John’s Unitarian Universalist Church for 29 years and retired from the Martin Luther King Chorale, a community chorus she co-founded and co-directed for 22 years. Since retirement, Roma founded UBUNTU Men’s Chorus, Madison Correctional (2012), Hope Thru Harmony Women’s Choir, Dayton Correctional (2014), and the World House Choir (2012), a 100-voice community peace and justice choir is southwest Ohio. Roma calls all of her choirs “choral communities” because she believes choral communities inspire, motivate, educate, and heal an ailing world.

Dr. Ianthe Marini is the Paul S. and Jean R. Amos Distinguished Chair for Choral Activities and Assistant Professor of Music in the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University (GA). She was the 2019 American Prize Winner in Conducting –University Division. She was selected to be a spotlight conductor at Carnegie Hall through the National Concerts series, as was her choir, The Schwob Singers from Columbus State University, selected as a spotlight chorus. The Schwob Singers and Marini were also the honored with a Third Place win in The Ernst Bacon Memorial Award competition for performance of American repertoire. She is faculty advisor to the Black Schwob Society.

Dr. Marini’s research involves the effects of acting on choral singing, and her dissertation explored these effects through her new rehearsal method, including the teachings of Stanislavski, Strasberg, and Hagen. Her research is published as an article in The Choral Conductor’s Companion compiled and edited by Brian J Winnie. An actor of stage and screen productions, she has recently starred as the leading role in independent films; Theresa Rebeck’s Drinking Problem, Cole Hamilton’s Beyond the White Veil, and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She has appeared on stage in numerous regional equity projects and was recognized by Boston Broadway Awards as Best Actress in a Musical for her work as Anita in West Side Story. Her work as a choral conductor is inextricably linked to her work as an actor. She is represented by Worldwide Talent Management.

From 2014-2017 Marini was Professional Chorus Master for a number of engagements with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore, MD. She currently serves as Professional Chorus Master for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in GA. Her professional preparations include: Handel’s Messiah for subscription performances with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center under the direction of Maestro Nathalie Stutzmann; preparation of the a cappella repertoire of Sir James MacMillan under his own baton at the Kennedy Center; preparation for the NSO Pops under the direction of Maestro Steven Reineke at the Kennedy Center; preparation for performances with the Baltimore Symphony SuperPops Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Jack Everly; preparation of Verdi’s Requiem and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro George del Gobbo, preparation of Bach’s Magnificat in D for the CSU Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Paul Hostetter, and preparation of Zhou Long’s The Future of Fire for the CSU Wind Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Jamie L. Nix.

Marini received her Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Maryland where she studied with Edward Maclary and James Ross. She was the recipient of the University’s Pomeroy Prize for scholarship and performance in 17th and 18th century music. She served the UMD Men’s Chorus as its first female director. In 2014 she was one of five winners of the International Conductor's Competition and received the opportunity to work with Jon Washburn and the Vancouver Chamber Choir. She received her MM in Choral Conducting from Temple University where she was the recipient of the Elaine Brown Memorial Scholarship and the Helen Laird Scholarship for Academic Achievement, and her Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Pennsylvania State University where she received the Flute Performance Scholarship and the Creative Achievement Award. She is an active clinician and has been an invited guest with choirs in California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maine.

Amy Voorhees is the new director of choral activities, conducting the University Choir and Chamber Singers and teaching Choral Conducting and Choral Methods. A recent graduate of Michigan State University, where she was a university distinguished fellow, Voorhees taught class voice, assisted with the MSU Choral Union, taught undergraduate conducting and conducted the MSU Campus Choir. She holds a B.M. degree in vocal performance from Simpson College, has additional music education training from Iowa State University and a master's degree with honors in educational leadership from Drake University.

Prior to her studies at MSU, Voorhees taught public school for 17 years with experience at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Her most recent appointment as the director of choral activities at Waukee High School included chair of the vocal music department K-12, supervising staff and accompanists, and overseeing 11 different choral ensembles, including very successful show and jazz choir programs. The A Cappella Concert Choir was invited to sing on the American Choral Director's Association National Convention in 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Voorhees also conducted the Cantate Advanced Treble Choir, Bella Voce Treble Choir and two vocal jazz ensembles and coached the singers for the annual high school musical. While at Waukee High School, Voorhees served on the affirmative action committee and leadership team for the Waukee Community Schools and held numerous other leadership roles within the school district and community. Additionally, she has served as an adjunct faculty member for Drake University. Voorhees had an active accompanying schedule as well, playing for numerous local churches as well as directing several adult and youth choirs. Choirs under her direction have received consecutive Superior I ratings and perfect scores at State Large Group Festival. She has worked with the Des Moines Children's Chorus, Ames Children's Choirs and Heartland Youth Choir in Iowa.

Voorhees is in demand as a clinician, guest conductor, presenter and vocal technician for numerous school districts and collegiate institutions. She has worked with choirs in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Colorado and has presented workshops and sessions at several colleges, universities, and numerous ACDA and NAFME conferences. She is a member of the American Choral Director's Association, National Association for Music Education, Jazz Education Network and Iowa Choral Directors organization, where she also previously served on the board of directors. Voorhees recently served on the board of directors for the Michigan State Vocal Music Association as coordinator of student activities, a position that unites undergraduates from around the state of Michigan as a way to foster growth in the future of music education.

Dr. Ellen Gilson Voth leads an active career as conductor and composer, educator and keyboard artist. Currently she is Artistic Director of the Farmington Valley Chorale based in Simsbury, CT, a large symphonic chorale of 80-100 members. She serves as Chair for Professional & Community Choirs and Composition Initiatives for the CT-ACDA board, and Vice Chair of the board of Choral Arts New England.

For seven years Voth served as Artistic Director of Novi Cantori, a professional chamber choir based in Springfield, MA – known for its innovative programming, for providing opportunities for choral composers to refine works-in-progress, and for forging community connections with organizations throughout the Pioneer Valley and Hartford region. She has also served as Chorus Director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus (MA), as Director of the Symphonic Chorale at Gordon College (MA), as Assistant Conductor of the New Haven Chorale (CT), as a conductor with the Connecticut Children’s Chorus, and as choral director at Perkiomen Valley High School in Collegeville, PA. For many summers Voth served on the faculty of the Masterworks Festival in Winona Lake, IN and the Csehy Summer School of Music in Langhorne, PA. Her guest conducting has been regional and national in scope, including the Rhode Island All-State Festival and OAKE National Chamber Choir in recent years.

A committed educator, Voth has served on the music faculties of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT; Westfield State University in Westfield, MA; Western New England University in Springfield, MA (also serving as music coordinator); Gordon College in Wenham, MA; and the Ithaca College School of Music in Ithaca, NY. Her teaching of choral/secondary methods, ear training, voice class, piano and composition reflects her passion for and dedication to high standards of artistry, scholarship, and integration among different areas of study. A well-established composer, Voth’s works are published by Oxford University Press, ECS Publishing, Colla Voce, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Graphite Publishing. Her works frequently appear at conferences of the College Music Society and the American Choral Directors Association. Recently Voth was the winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Composition Prize, the Michigan Choral Commission Consortium, and a finalist in the 2020 ACDA Brock competition for professional composers. Past commissions include the Ellington High School Choirs, CONCORA (Connecticut Choral Artists), Cantilena: a Women’s Chorale (Arlington, MA), Central Bucks West High School (Doylestown, PA), the New Haven Chorale (New Haven, CT), the Children’s Aid Society Chorus (New York, New York), the Greater Middletown Chorale (Middletown, CT), Perkiomen Valley High School (Collegeville, PA) and the Boston Children’s Chorus (Boston, MA). Others of her works have been premiered or performed by VOCE (Hartford, CT), Novi Cantori (Springfield, MA), The Choral Art Society of Portland, Maine, and the Princeton Singers (Lehigh University choral composers’ forum, Bethlehem, PA). She is a singing member of CONCORA, has been an active church musician throughout the Northeast, and performs regularly as a pianist and organist. Voth received her doctoral degree (DMA) from The Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford (CT), where she was the recipient of the Regents’ Honor Award for graduate students. Her master’s degree (MM) was from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (NJ), and her bachelor’s degree (BME), magna cum laude, was from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music (IL). Ellen, her husband, Greg, and their daughter, Heather Joylin, make their home in West Hartford, CT.

Dr. Andrea Solya is Teaching Associate Professor of Composition-Theory and Choral Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is also the director of the U of I Women’s Glee Club. She also coordinates the two-year course sequence of Musicianship (aural skills) and teaches choral conducting and literature to undergraduate and graduate music education students.

In addition to her duties at the University of Illinois, she is in daily contact with middle school and high school choral singers of the Champaign-Urbana area as the director of Chamber Choir and Youth Chorale at the Central Illinois Children’s Chorus since 2006. As a native of Hungary, her newly designed Musicianship curriculum at the University of Illinois is based on a Hungarian model and stands on the major pillars of the Kodály method. During the summers, she teaches musicianship, conducting and choral methodology in the master’s program of the Kodály Institute at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Solya also serves as College/University Repertoire and Standards chair of IL-ACDA. Her research interest includes the choral music of Andreas Rauch as well as the art of teaching sight singing for the choral singer and beyond. She has performed and presented on national and international stages and has been working on a critical edition of 25 motets called “Thymiaterium Musicale” from 1625 by Rauch.

Dr. Emily Mason is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music education, and conducts the Fresno State University Singers. She holds degrees from Florida State University (Ph.D., Music Education), the Ohio State University (M.M., Vocal Performance) and Capital University (B.M., Music Education). An elementary general music specialist, Dr. Mason also has certification and training in several teaching pedagogies including the Kodály Method, Orff-Schulwerk Approach, and Dalcroze-Eurhythmics. An active clinician and researcher, Dr. Mason has presented workshops and research at State and National conferences, and has been published in Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, the Music Educators Journal, General Music Today, and the Choral Journal. Her research interests include preservice teachers, music in early childhood, and community engagement.

Dr. Mason is a strong advocate for music in early childhood and early teaching experiences at the undergraduate level. In the spring 2016 she began a collaboration with the Huggins Center at Fresno State, and provided music instruction for the pre-school classrooms. In the fall 2016, Dr. Mason was able to continue this collaboration by organizing a teaching practicum for undergraduates enrolled in her elementary music education methods course. Students participate in creating and teaching lessons to children in the four pre-school classrooms of the Huggins Center. This practicum was the first of its kind at Fresno State and allowed students (collegiate and pre-school) to benefit in multiple ways. It has been well received by administrators, community members, parents, and students.

In addition to her research and presentations, Dr. Mason has been a voice teacher in the private studio and at the collegiate level. She has also had successful children’s choirs in several states, including Illinois, Florida, and New York. She has been a guest conductor and clinician for numerous music festivals in New York and Florida, and adjudicated festivals in Illinois and California. Dr. Mason is also an advocate for life-long participation in music having conducted an Intergenerational Choir, and by singing in the Fresno Community Chorus Master Chorale.

In the summer of 2018, Dr. Mason implemented a summer workshop for area music teachers titled Orff & Kodály 101: An Introductory Workshop. In this workshop, teachers were able to learn the basic tenets of both teaching pedagogies and to experience playing on a variety of Sonor Orff Instruments supplied by KHS America. The enthusiastic reception of this workshop has resulted in its continuation in Summer 2019.