Contributors

Patricia Abbott is Artistic Director of CAMMAC (Canadian Amateur Musicians/Musiciens amateurs du Canada) and a lecturer in choral conducting at McGill University in Montreal, where she has worked as a conductor, singer, music educator and arts administrator for thirty years. For sixteen years, she served as Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Choral Communities (ACCC). Ms. Abbott has shared her passion for Canadian choral music, notably that of French Canada, in workshops, festivals, and conferences across Canada and the United States, as well as in Belgium, France, and Argentina.
Chester L. Alwes has an established reputation as a choral conductor, composer, editor, teacher, and author of A History of Western Choral Music . Dr. Alwes conducted choirs and taught graduate choral literature at the University of Illinois for nearly thirty years.
Mike Brewer OBE has a worldwide reputation as choral director and workshop clinician. Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain since 1983, he is equally known as the author of a series of books for choral directors, including Kickstart Your Choir , Fine Tune Your Choir , and Warmups . His publications include arrangements for choirs (notably “Hamba Lulu” and ”Banuwa”) and four volumes of Mike Brewer’s World Tour .
Simon Carrington professor emeritus of choral conducting at Yale University, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in music, performing as singer, double bass player, and conductor. He was the co-founder and creative force for twenty-five years with the internationally acclaimed British vocal ensemble The King’s Singers . Carrington served as the director of choral activities at the University of Kansas and New England Conservatory in Boston before being appointed to Yale where he founded Yale Schola Cantorum and brought it to international prominence. He now maintains a busy schedule as a freelance conductor and choral clinician, leading workshops and masterclasses internationally.
Gene J. Cho is a professor of music at the University of North Texas and received his PhD from Northwestern University. His publications include The Replica of the Ark of the Covenant in Japan: The Mystery of Mi-fune-Shiro (2008), The Discovery of Musical Equal Temperament in China and Europe in the Sixteenth Century (2003), monographs, pedagogical manuals, and journal articles. His compositions and arrangements have been published and performed in the United States and overseas. He has been awarded honorary professorship appointments by Xinghai Conservatory, Yunnan Conservatory, Shandong Arts College, and Huanan University of Technology.
Rudolf de Beer is a South African conductor whose research is focused on choral music in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to pursuing a career in conducting, he also arranges and composes choral music. He often receives international invitations to do presentations on African choral music. He received a master’s degree from the University of Oslo, and completed a doctorate in choral conducting via a combined study at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo.
André de Quadros as a conductor, scholar, music educator, and human rights activist, has conducted and undertaken research in over forty countries. He is a professor of music at Boston University, where he also holds positions in African studies, Asian studies, and Muslim studies. He is the conductor of the Manado State University Choir (Indonesia) and artistic director of Aswatuna, Arab Choral Initiative, editor of Music of Asia and the Pacific and Salamu Aleikum: Music of the Muslim World , and general editor of the Carmina Mundi series. www.andredequadros.com
Cornelia Fales is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in vocal and instrumental timbre, both acoustic and synthetic, in traditional and popular music. Her work has been published in most of the major ethnomusicology journals and she has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Indiana University. In addition to ongoing research on the traditional music of Rwanda and Burundi, she is working on a book comparing concepts of timbre as they developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with notions of “sound color” as used in twentieth-century electronic dance music.
Liz Garnett is a musicologist, choral clinician, and close-harmony arranger. Her research focuses on music and social values, and her publications include two books, The British Barbershopper: A Study in Socio-Musical Values (2005) and Choral Conducting and the Construction of Meaning: Gesture, Voice, Identity (2009). She was Head of Postgraduate Studies at the Birmingham Conservatoire until 2009 and now works as a performance coach with choirs, conductors, and vocal ensembles internationally.
Mary Goetze’s professional activities are centered around multiculturalism and children’s singing. She contributed to the children’s choir movement in the United States as a clinician, author, composer, and conductor. While on faculty at Indiana University, Dr. Goetze founded the International Vocal Ensemble with whom she explored singing styles from around the globe. Now retired, she continues to develop Global Voices DVDs for teaching music from diverse cultures using multimedia. She is the co-author of Educating Young Singers: A Choral Resource for Teacher-Conductors, Share the Music and Spotlight on Music , and the author of numerous published compositions and arrangements.
Karen Grylls ONZM is Artistic Director of Choirs Aotearoa, New Zealand and Musical Director of the New Zealand Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir. With these choirs, she has established her reputation as an advocate of the many traditions of New Zealand choral music in which they specialize. The disc Spirit of the Land (2006) won the award for best classical disc in the New Zealand Music Awards. Karen Grylls is currently an associate professor of music and head of choral studies at the University of Auckland, and she is much in demand as a clinician, adjudicator, and teacher of choral conducting.
María Guinand is a choral conductor and professor whose work is focused on Latin American contemporary choral music. She has released several recordings of this repertoire with the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela and the Cantoría Alberto Grau. Guinand is frequently invited to guest-conduct many prestigious choirs and to lecture at universities and international symposia. She is head of the graduate program in choral conducting at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, advisor of the choral program of “El Sistema,” and editor of the Música de Latinoamérica series of choral music.
Paul Hillier is an English conductor and founding director of the Hilliard Ensemble. He has taught at the University of California (Davis and Santa Cruz) and served as director of the Early Music Institute at Indiana University. Hillier has published books on Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich. In 2006, he was awarded an OBE for his contributions to choral music. The following year he received the Order of the White Star of Estonia and received a Grammy for Best Choral Recording. Hillier currently directs choirs in Copenhagen, Porto, and Dublin, and his own group, Theatre of Voices.
Aida Huseynova is an associate professor at Baku Music Academy (Azerbaijan) and a visiting faculty member at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Dr. Huseynova’s work in musicology focuses on East–West synthesis in music. Her books, articles, and multimedia projects have been published in Azerbaijan, Europe, and the United States. Dr. Huseynova has taught music from Azerbaijan to the Indiana University International Vocal Ensemble and has prepared recordings of choral performances from Azerbaijan for the Global Voices in Song DVD series (2005). Since 2007, she has served as a research advisor and interpreter for the Silk Road Project under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma.
Ann Howard Jones is a professor of music and director of choral activities at Boston University where she is responsible for a highly regarded graduate program in choral conducting. Widely recognized for her conducting, leadership, and teaching, she received the Robert Shaw Choral Award from the American Choral Directors Association (2011) for distinguished professional achievement and service, and the Metcalf Award from Boston University for exemplary teaching. Dr. Jones has written on score preparation, rehearsing, and healthy singing in the choral rehearsal. For many years, she worked alongside the late Robert Shaw with the Atlanta Symphony Choruses and the Robert Shaw Institute.
Jing Ling-Tam is a professor of music at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she served as director of choral studies from 1999 to 2009.
Matthew Mehaffey is an associate professor of music at the University of Minnesota, where he conducts several choirs and teaches classes in conducting and choral repertoire. He also serves as artistic director and conductor of the Oratorio Society of Minnesota and has taught at the George Washington University and Macalester College. He has published extensively on the topics of choral repertoire and music education and frequently presents his research at national and international venues. www.matthewmehaffey.com
Victoria Meredith is a professor of music and associate dean at the Western University (Canada). Her research interests include Canadian choral repertoire, the adult voice, and interrelationships between physical and vocal conditioning. She has published numerous critical performing editions of Renaissance and Baroque choral compositions, over forty scholarly articles, and the award-winning book Sing Better As You Age . She is a frequent guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator, and choirs under her direction have received over a dozen national awards. She has served on the editorial board of the Choral Journal and as president of the Association of Canadian Choral Communities.
Francisco J. Núñez a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, is a conductor, composer, visionary, leading figure in music education, and the founder of the award-winning Young People’s Chorus (YPC) of New York City, cited as a national model of artistic excellence and diversity under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Núñez is working with the Dominican Republic to create a national choral program inspired by YPC to unite the country’s children – rich and poor. Among Núñez’s many honors are an ASCAP Concert Music Award, the New York Choral Society’s Choral Excellence Award, and the 2009 La Sociedad Coral Latinoamericana’s Man of the Year Award.
Andrew Parrott has always put choral music at the forefront of his musical activities – as a widely traveled freelance conductor, as director of his own Taverner Choir & Consort, and as an independent scholar. Alongside work in opera, orchestral, and contemporary music, a succession of pioneering choral recordings (including works by Machaut, Tallis, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Purcell, Vivaldi , Handel, and Bach) has charted his exploration of performance practices across the ages. In addition to major articles on related matters, his publications include The New Oxford Book of Carols (co-editor), The Essential Bach Choir , and the first full reconstruction of J. S. Bach’s Trauer-music for Prince Leopold.
Doreen Rao is a conductor and master teacher whose distinguished career links the standards of professional performance with the goals of music education. She has held the Cameron Baird Conductor’s Chair as Music Director and Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and is the Elmer Iseler Chair in Conducting (Emerita) at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. Rao’s influential work fostered the children’s choir movement in America and inspired a generation of conductors and teachers to lead young choirs around the world.
Kathy Saltzman Romey is the director of choral activities at the University of Minnesota and artistic director of the Minnesota Chorale. She is also chorus master of the Oregon Bach Festival Choir and has prepared this ensemble for American and world premiere performances and recording projects. She regularly serves as chorus master for the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart and has prepared programs with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Netherlands Radio Choir, Berkshire Choral Festival, Carnegie Hall Festival Chorus, and Grant Park Chorus. A strong advocate of community engagement, Romey coordinates the Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble and BRIDGES, the Minnesota Chorale’s nationally acclaimed outreach program.
John Rutter is a British conductor, editor, composer, arranger, and producer. His well-known choral works include Gloria (1974), Requiem (1985), Magnificat (1990), and Mass of the Children (2003), performed many times in Britain, North America, and a growing number of other countries. He co-edited four volumes in the Carols for Choirs series with Sir David Willcocks, and, more recently, edited Opera Choruses (1995) and European Sacred Music (1996).
Leo Samama is a composer and musicologist who specializes in choral music, music philosophy, music theory, and contemporary music. He has taught at Utrecht University and the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, has written books on Dutch music in the twentieth century, on British music, and on Beethoven, and contributed to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . He is co-founder of the Tenso network for professional chamber choirs in Europe and gives masterclasses for young choral composers. For many years he was artistic manager of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and general manager of the Netherlands Chamber Choir.
Wilson Shitandi is a lecturer at Kenyatta University in Nairobi where he teaches courses in ethnomusicology, African music, and choral music. Shitandi sings, conducts, composes, and arranges African indigenous and national songs, and Euro-American classical music. Among his choral compositions are ten masses for mixed chorus in Kiswahili and English. He is the director of St. Cecilia Holy Cross Choir in Nairobi, a member of Nairobi Choral Music Society, and he has also performed with several choral groups in Germany.
Wolodymyr Smishkewych has specialized in medieval song, chant, and new music since the mid 1990s, and is a member of the ensembles Sequentia and Theatre of Voices. He is a sought-after pedagogue in medieval, contemporary and world vocal music, and has lectured and performed throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Canada, and Australia. Formerly the director of Indiana University’s International Vocal Ensemble, he is the course director for the Master of Arts in Ritual Chant and Song at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick.
Nick Strimple serves on the faculty at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where he teaches courses in choral literature, sacred music, and music related to the Holocaust. Author of numerous articles and two critically acclaimed books, Choral Music in the Twentieth Century (2002) and Choral Music in the Nineteenth Century (2008), he has lectured at Oxford University, Yale University, and other leading institutions, and has conducted some of the world’s finest ensembles, including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Polish National Opera. www.nickstrimple.com