A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures.
José Manuel Joly Braga Santos, ComSE was a Portuguese composer and conductor, who was born and died in Lisbon. He wrote six symphonies.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical music composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus. For his notable students, See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Bernard Rands.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist, currently a Professor of Music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century. He is famed among classical musicians and aficionados for his increasingly influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line. Rifkin argued: "So long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus, with few exceptions, simply did not exist." He is best known by the general public, however, for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s, with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
Anthony Francis Dominic Milner was a British composer, teacher and conductor.
Michael McGlynn is an Irish composer, producer, director, and founder of the vocal ensemble Anúna.
Richard Blackford is an English composer.
David Blair Hamilton is a New Zealand composer and teacher.
Eduardo Alonso-Crespo is an Argentine composer of classical music.
Cecilia McDowall is a British composer, best known for her choral music.
Victoria Vita Polevá is a Ukrainian composer.
Gil Shohat is an Israeli classical music composer, conductor, pianist and lecturer.
Julius Penson Williams, is an American composer, conductor, and college professor. He is currently president of the Conductors Guild. An author of both instrumental and vocal music, Julius Williams has composed operas, symphonies, and chorus works for stage, concert hall, film, and television. Primarily a classically trained musician, Williams also writes in genres including gospel, jazz, and other contemporary forms.
Aleksander Robert Szeligowski was a Polish composer, conductor, organist and pedagogue. He studied in Poznań and Warsaw, later working as assistant conductor for the Poznań Philharmonic. Son of Tadeusz Szeligowski, he is the author of numerous compositions for piano, female and mixed choirs and others.
Romuald Twardowski is a Polish composer.
Joep Franssens is a Dutch composer.
Jake Runestad is an American composer and conductor of classical music based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has composed music for a wide variety of musical genres and ensembles, but has achieved greatest acclaim for his work in the genres of opera, orchestral music, choral music, and wind ensemble. One of his principal collaborators for musical texts has been the poet Todd Boss.
Harold Rosenbaum is an American conductor and musician. He is the artistic director and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers and the Canticum Novum Singers. The New York Virtuoso Singers appear on 48 albums on labels including Naxos Records and Sony Classical. He has collaborated extensively with many ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Mark Morris Dance Group, Orchestra of Saint Luke's, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Riverside Symphony, and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
