My professional life has been a gratifying exploration of performance (conducting), teaching, and scholarship. Each area has nurtured the others, and all have moved me toward attempting to fill voids—creating a chamber singers group when the literature and situation call for it, investigating a well-known composer who wrote much more vocal music than folks generally know, or imagining the sound in a baroque composer’s ear and bringing that sonic landscape to present day concerts.

Experiencing these synergies while working with outstanding students, community and professional singers, instrumentalists and colleagues has been incredibly rewarding and transformative.

In Conducting Highlights, I’ve picked out a few concerts, from mainstage Handel Society performances and Chamber Singer Feast of Songs productions to Handel Choir of Baltimore’s première of Leshnoff”s Requiem for the Fallen and Chandos Singers’ staged production of Handel’s Jephtha. Plus there are guest conductor experiences.

As is clear, I hope, from this and my Repertoire list, my composer interests range from early music to the present.

Reviews by the Press give an outsider’s critical viewpoint of some of my performances.

Under Initiatives, I walk through the various courses, ensembles, and programs I had a prominent role in starting at Dartmouth College and in Baltimore.

In Publications and Presentations, I highlight my research, writing, and talks on topics such as performance practices, Berlioz vocal literature, and conducting pedagogy.

Lastly, in the interest of motivating more choral conductors to perform more Berlioz, there is a list of the several Berlioz Music Editions, online and in print, that I’ve made with the help of colleagues.

Credits:
Banner image by Thomas Stearns
Photo of Melinda O’Neal conducting by Peggy Tonseth