Morten Johannes Lauridsen is an American composer. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001) and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 40 years.
John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the Billboard charts to date. According to Guinness Music Chart historian Paul Gambacini, Johnny Mathis has sold well over 360 million records worldwide making Mathis the third biggest selling artist of the 20th Century. Mathis has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for three separate recordings.
David Conte, is an American composer who has written over one hundred works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007.
Debra Ann Fischer is a professor of astronomy at Yale University researching detection and characterization of exoplanets. She was part of the team to discover the first known multiple-planet system. She also worked with Dr Tabetha Suzanne Boyajian.
Gordon Peter Getty is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist and classical music composer, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. His mother, Ann Rork, was his father's fourth wife. When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty's US$2 billion trust. According to the Forbes 400, as of September 2011 his net worth is $2 billion, making him number 212 on the list of the richest Americans.
Maude Victoria Barlow is a Canadian author and activist. She is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, a citizens’ advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works internationally for the human right to water. Maude chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch, is a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. In 2008/2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN. She has authored and co-authored 18 books.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer and pianist. His compositions are inspired by American Indian history and culture.
The Baltimore Choral Arts Society is a music organization in Baltimore, Maryland that manages a full orchestra, a chorus and a chamber chorus. The Baltimore Choral Arts Society, now in its 50th season, is one of Maryland's premier cultural institutions. The Symphonic Chorus, Full Chorus, Orchestra, and Chamber Chorus perform throughout the mid-Atlantic region, as well as in Washington, D.C., New York, and in Europe. Performance venues include the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, as well as Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium. The Society has collaborated with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Chamber Symphony, Peter Schickele, pianist and scholar Robert Levin, Chanticleer, Dave Brubeck, and the King's Singers.
San Francisco Girls Chorus, established in 1978 by Elizabeth Appling and celebrating its 40th anniversary during the 2018-2019 Season, is a leading regional center for music education and performance for young women, ages 4–18, based in San Francisco. Each year, more than 300 singers from 45 Bay Area cities participate in the SFGC’s programs. The organization consists of a professional-level performance, recording, and touring ensemble and a six-level Chorus School training program. A leading voice on the Bay Area and national music scenes, the Chorus has produced award-winning concerts, recordings and tours, empowered young women in music and other fields, enhanced and expanded the field of music for treble voices and set the international standard for the highest level of performance and education. The Chorus has been the recipient of 5 GRAMMY Awards, 4 Chorus America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, and the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence from Chorus America. SFGC's Chorus School has been described as "a model in the country for training girls' voices" by the California Arts Council.
Frank Ticheli is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is a Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California. He was the Pacific Symphony's composer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998, composing numerous works for that orchestra. A number of his works are particularly notable, as they have become standards in concert band repertoire.
James Fraser Kasting is an American geoscientist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University. Kasting is active in NASA’s search for habitable extrasolar planets. He is considered a world leader in the field of planetary habitability, assessing habitable zones around stars. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Kasting also serves on the Advisory Council of METI.
The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (SFGMC) is the world's first openly gay chorus, one of the world's largest male choruses and the group most often credited with creating the LGBT choral movement.
Missa Latina is a classical music composition written by the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra. The work was written for SATB chorus with two soloists, and a symphonic orchestra. It was co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and The Choral Arts Society of Washington and was written through 2003–2005. It premiered in 2006 at Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and was also performed in the 51st Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. The Washington Times judged it "the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem was first performed in the still-unfinished Washington National Cathedral in the late 1960s."
Emma Lou Diemer is an American composer.
Volti is a 16- to 24-person professional vocal ensemble based in San Francisco. The group was founded by Robert Geary in 1979 as the San Francisco Chamber Singers. The group quickly moved on to the more contemporary works that have shaped its mission ever since: "to foster and showcase contemporary American music and composers, and to introduce contemporary vocal music from around the world to local audiences." When the group turned 25 in 2003-2004, it changed its name to Volti - a reference to the Italian musical instruction "volti subito" meaning "turn quickly."
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.
The San Francisco Choral Society is a nonprofit organization comprising 150-200 auditioned, volunteer singers dedicated to the performance of choral masterpieces and commissioned works, and accompanied by professional orchestras and soloists. The performance schedule includes two concerts each in spring, summer, and fall, and an annual holiday concert and singalong.
Scott Arthur Tucker is an American conductor. He is most widely known as the artistic director of The Choral Arts Society of Washington, a position he assumed in 2012, and as the director of choral music at Cornell University from 1995-2012.
