Charles Bruffy (born 1958) is an American choral conductor. He is artistic director of the Kansas City Chorale [1] in Kansas City, Missouri, and is Chorus Director of the Kansas City Symphony. [2] He lives in Kansas City.
Charles Bruffy (born 1958) is an American choral conductor. He is artistic director of the Kansas City Chorale [1] in Kansas City, Missouri, and is Chorus Director of the Kansas City Symphony. [2] He lives in Kansas City.
Charles Bruffy received his bachelor's degree in piano performance from Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph, Missouri, and a master's degree in vocal performance from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri Kansas City. He received the Spotlight Alumni Award from the Conservatory of Music at UMKC's 1999 Alumni Awards Luncheon. [3] He received the UMKC Class of 2016 Alumni Award for the Conservatory. [4] In October 2017 he received the Signature Sinfonian award from the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity.
Bruffy began his career as a tenor soloist for Robert Shaw (conductor), performing with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers for recordings and concerts in France and at Carnegie Hall in New York. Mr. Shaw encouraged Mr. Bruffy's development as a conductor, and in 1996 he was invited by American Public Media's Performance Today to help celebrate Shaw's eightieth birthday with an on-air tribute. In 1999, The New York Times named Bruffy as the late Shaw's potential heir. [5] Bruffy became artistic director of the Kansas City Chorale in 1988. He has been Director of Music at Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church since 1995. [6] He took the reins as Chorus Director of the Kansas City Symphony Chorus in 2008.
Bruffy conducts workshops and clinics both across the US and internationally. In 2015, he conducted the Texas All-State Choir. [7] He presented workshops and conducted one of his choirs, the Kansas City Chorale, for the Association of Canadian Choral Communities at Podium 2014 – Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2014. [8] He was a clinician for the Anúna International Choral Summer School in 2013, [9] and his past engagements include clinics and conducting in Beijing, China; Sydney, Australia and Incheon, Korea among other cities. He has taught at the Westminster Choir College Summer Conducting Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, every summer since 2006. [10]
He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Atlanta Young Singers of Callanwolde and WomenSing in the San Francisco Bay area, [11] [12] and he served on the board of Chorus America for seven years. Bruffy has commissioned and premiered works by composers such as Ola Gjeilo, Matthew Harris, Anne Kilstofte, Libby Larsen, Zhou Long, Cecilia McDowall, Stephen Paulus, Steven Sametz, Philip Stopford, Steven Stucky, Joan Szymko, Eric Whitacre, Jean Belmont and Chen Yi. He has edited scores for the Roger Dean Company, a division of The Lorenz Corporation, which publishes a choral series specializing in music for professional ensembles and sophisticated high school and college choirs. [13]
Bruffy received three Grammy awards as a conductor, and his albums received five Grammys total. He received the 2008 Grammy for "Best Small Ensemble Performance" with the Phoenix Chorale for Spotless Rose. He won the 2012 Grammy for "Best Choral Performance" with the Kansas City Chorale for Life and Breath: Music of René Clausen which also won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album-Classical. [14] His recording Rachmaninoff: All Night Vigil with the combined voices of the Kansas City Chorale and the Phoenix Chorale won the 2015 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. [15] His breakthrough recording was Alexander Gretchaninov's Passion Week, also featuring the two Chorales together. It won the 2007 Grammy award for "Best Engineered Classical Album".
His albums were nominated for 12 Grammy awards total, including four nominations in 2007 for Passion Week, two in 2008 for Sacred Choral Works of Josef Rheinberger, two in 2008 for Spotless Rose, two in 2012 for Life and Breath, and two in 2015 for All-Night Vigil.
Morten Johannes Lauridsen is an American composer and academic teacher. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and is the distinguished professor emeritus of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he taught for fifty-two years until his retirement in 2019.
The Los Angeles Master Chorale is a professional chorus in Los Angeles, California, and one of the resident companies of both The Music Center and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1964 by Roger Wagner to be one of the three original resident companies of the Music Center of Los Angeles County. Grant Gershon has been its music director since 2001, replacing Paul Salamunovich.
Eric Edward Whitacre is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March 2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
Margaret Eleanor Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Michael McGlynn is an Irish composer, producer, director, and founder of the vocal ensemble Anúna.
Simon Halsey, CBE is an English choral conductor. He is the chorus director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, a position he has held since 1983, and has been chorus director of the London Symphony Chorus since 2012. He is also artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Youth Choral Programme and the director of the BBC Proms Youth Choir, and conductor laureate of the Berlin Radio Choir. He is professor and director of choral activities at the University of Birmingham.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.
The Kansas City Chorale is a professional 27-voice chorus conducted by Charles Bruffy. They perform a four concert series in Kansas City, tour nationwide, and perform with their sister choir, the Phoenix Chorale, also conducted by Mr. Bruffy. During his tenure as conductor, the chorus has achieved international acclaim. Mr. Bruffy, renowned for his fresh interpretations of both traditional and new music, was noted by The New York Times as a disciple of the late Robert Shaw.
The Robert Shaw Chorale was a renowned professional choir founded in New York City in 1948 by Robert Shaw, a Californian who had been drafted out of college a decade earlier by Fred Waring to conduct his glee club in radio broadcasts.
Grant Gershon is a Grammy Award winning American conductor and pianist. He is Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, formerly Resident Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera, member of the Board of Councillors for the USC Thornton School of Music and a former member of the Chorus America Board of Directors.
Paul Salamunovich KCSG was a Grammy-nominated, American conductor and educator.
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The Phoenix Chorale is a professional chamber choir based in Phoenix, Arizona, United States.
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Ragnar Bohlin is a Swedish conductor born in 1965.
Norman Orville Scribner was an American conductor, composer, pianist and organist. He was most widely known as the founder of The Choral Arts Society of Washington, and as its artistic director for over 45 years.
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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 Todd Boss.
The GRAMMY® Award-winning National Children's Chorus of the United States of America (NCC) is a private, non-profit organization, and one of the largest children's choruses in the world. It has 1,000 choristers and its members are between the ages of five and eighteen, and divided into Junior Division and Senior Division across its seven chapter cities - Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Austin, Dallas and Boston.
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