Teresa Neff, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in History/Culture at MIT. She has has given papers at the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society, the Society for 18^th-Century Studies annual meetings, the Architecture/Music/Acoustics Conference, the Western Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, and the Society for American Music. 

Neff has been the Handel and Haydn Society’s Christopher Hogwood Historically Informed Performance Fellow since 2009 and co-edited The Handel and Haydn Society: Bringing Music to Life for 200 Years, in addition to authoring a chapter for that publication. 

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After starting his classical music career as a member of twice GRAMMY® nominated ensemble Seraphic Fire, countertenor Reggie Mobley has since appeared with Academy of Ancient Music, Agave Baroque, Bach Collegium San Diego, Calgary Symphony, Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists, Pacific Music Works, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, TENET, and The Handel + Haydn Society. With the latter, he had the honor of becoming the first Black person to lead H+H in its Bicentennial year. Recent festival appearances include Bachfest Leipzig, Festival Berlioz, Early Music Vancouver, Thüringer Bachwoche, Portland Bach Experience, and the Boston Early Music Festival. 

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Professor Schmidt specializes in European intellectual history and the history of political and social thought from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985) and the editor of What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1996) and Theodor Adorno (2007) and co-editor, with Amelie Rorty, of the Critical Guide to Kant’s Idea for a Universal History (2009). The recipient of a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he also received the James L. Clifford Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, was a Fellow in History at the Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

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After starting his classical music career as a member of twice GRAMMY® nominated ensemble Seraphic Fire, countertenor Reggie Mobley has since appeared with Academy of Ancient Music, Agave Baroque, Bach Collegium San Diego, Calgary Symphony, Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists, Pacific Music Works, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, TENET, and The Handel + Haydn Society. With the latter, he had the honor of becoming the first Black person to lead H+H in its Bicentennial year. Recent festival appearances include Bachfest Leipzig, Festival Berlioz, Early Music Vancouver, Thüringer Bachwoche, Portland Bach Experience, and the Boston Early Music Festival. 

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Music and English are universal languages. Everyone should have access to these languages without fear of making mistakes, whether spoken or sung. In partnership with the Boston Public Library, our Bridges E.S.L. Singing Group provides participants with an opportunity to make vocal music, improve their English language skills, and develop friendships with fellow community members — singers from Back Bay Chorale.

Learn more about Bridges >

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King has cultivated an international reputation as a choral conductor, scholar, pedagogue, and media personality. He is passionate about cultivating artistically excellent ensembles that explore socially relevant issues through emotionally immersive programs, challenging both artists and audiences to feel and think. Dr. Trecek-King has recently been appointed Associate Professor of Choral Music and Director of Choral Activities at The Harrt School, University of Hartford.

Ensembles under his direction were integral to projects that have won a Pulitzer Prize (Madam White Snake, Zhou Long), received a Grammy (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and earned the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from Presidential Committee on the Arts (Boston Children’s Chorus). Dr. Trecek-King has worked with a variety of artists and ensembles including Leslie Odom Jr., Melinda Doolittle, Seraphic Fire, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Gil Rose, Simon Halsey, Yo Yo Ma, and Roomful of Teeth.

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Over the past 20 years, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King has cultivated an international reputation as a choral conductor, scholar, pedagogue, and media personality. He is passionate about cultivating artistically excellent ensembles that explore socially relevant issues through emotionally immersive programs, challenging both artists and audiences to feel and think. Dr. Trecek-King has recently been appointed Associate Professor of Choral Music and Director of Choral Activities at The Harrt School, University of Hartford.

Ensembles under his direction were integral to projects that have won a Pulitzer Prize (Madam White Snake, Zhou Long), received a Grammy (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and earned the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from Presidential Committee on the Arts (Boston Children’s Chorus). Dr. Trecek-King has worked with a variety of artists and ensembles including Leslie Odom Jr., Melinda Doolittle, Seraphic Fire, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Gil Rose, Simon Halsey, Yo Yo Ma, and Roomful of Teeth.

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Music and English are universal languages. Everyone should have access to these languages without fear of making mistakes, whether spoken or sung. In partnership with the Boston Public Library, our Bridges E.S.L. Singing Group provides participants with an opportunity to make vocal music, improve their English language skills, and develop friendships with fellow community members — singers from Back Bay Chorale.

Learn more about Bridges >

Karen P. Thomas, composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Seattle Pro Musica. Her compositions are performed and broadcast throughout the world, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, NOTUS,  and the Vocal Consort of Brussels. Her works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and KarenPThomas Music (this website), and have been featured at numerous festivals and conferences.

A prize-winning composer, she has received grants from the NEA, The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and Meet the Composer, among numerous others. Among her many commissions are works for the Harvard/Radcliffe Choirs, the Grand Jubilee in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, the Pacific Chorale, Chorus Austin, and the Association of Anglican Musicians.

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As Director of Music at New York’s historic Trinity Church Wall Street, Julian Wachner oversees an annual season of hundreds of events, with duties including conducting Trinity’s flagship weekly series, Bach-at-One, canvassing the entire choral-orchestral output of J. S. Bach, and leading Compline-by-Candlelight, Trinity’s innovative fully-improvised variation on an ancient monastic ritual. In addition, Wachner curates the long-standing and cherished series Concerts-at-One, presenting an eclectic program of weekly concerts for Lower Manhattan and beyond through its HD live webcasting. Also at Trinity Wall Street, Wachner serves as the Principal Conductor of NOVUS NY (Trinity’s resident contemporary music orchestra), the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. 

Wachner has made numerous guest appearances with various organizations such as: the Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Glimmerglass, and Mannes Opera; Hawaii and Juilliard Opera Theater; Opera America;  Encompass Opera; the Philadelphia and The National Arts Centre Orchestra; the Montreal, Pacific, Calgary, and Pittsburgh Symphonies; the New York and Hong Kong Philharmonic; Carnegie Hall Presents; National Sawdust; Montréal Bach Festival; Lincoln Center Festival; Philharmonia Baroque; Salle Bourgie; Beth Morrison Projects; Berkeley Festival and Exhibition; Prototype Festival; Spoleto Festival USA; Handel and Haydn Society; Bang on a Can All-Stars; and the Boston Pops.  

Wachner’s performances inspire uncommon praise. The New York Times pronounced his Trinity Wall Street debut “superbly performed” and noted that the ensemble’s annual Lincoln Center presentation of Handel’s Messiah was “led with both fearsome energy and delicate grace…a model of what is musically and emotionally possible with this venerable score.” Of his interpretation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, according to the Boston Globe, “there was genius here and no mistaking it.” Anne Midgette, of the Washington Post, declared recent Wagner and Verdi performances “exhilarating,” commenting, “Julian Wachner knows how to draw maximum drama from a score,” and noted that he was “emphatic and theatrical and so at home in opera that he could bring out the requisite sense of drama.”

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Ann Howard Jones  is professor emerita of Music at Boston University. During her twenty-two years as director of choral activities, she founded and conducted the Symphonic and Chamber Choruses, supervised conducting students in the Concert Chorus and Women’s Chorale, taught graduate choral conducting, and administered the MM and DMA programs in choral conducting. 

Recognized as a distinguished clinician, adjudicator, teacher and conductor, Dr. Jones has led many all-state and regional choruses, workshops, and master classes in the U.S., Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. She has been invited to teach and conduct at the University of Iowa, the University of North Texas, Michigan State University, University of Missouri University of Miami, San Diego State University, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Southern Methodist University, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, and many others. 

From 1984 to 1998, Dr. Jones was the assistant conductor to the late Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony choruses, where she was the assistant conductor for choruses, sang in the alto section, assisted with the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers, and helped to organize the Robert Shaw Institute. She sang and recorded with the Festival Singers both in France and in the U.S. The Festival Singers were also represented in annual performances of major works for chorus and orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a series of performance workshops. 

Among the honors that Jones has received are the coveted Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching from Boston University, a Fulbright professorship to Brazil, and a lectureship for the Lily Foundation. At the ACDA national conference in 2011, she was named the recipient of the Robert Shaw Choral Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, the highest award given by the association. In 2012 she received the Distinguished Service award from Chorus America, and in 2015 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Choral Arts New England.

Karen P. Thomas, composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Seattle Pro Musica. Her compositions are performed and broadcast throughout the world, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, NOTUS,  and the Vocal Consort of Brussels. Her works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and KarenPThomas Music (this website), and have been featured at numerous festivals and conferences.

A prize-winning composer, she has received grants from the NEA, The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and Meet the Composer, among numerous others. Among her many commissions are works for the Harvard/Radcliffe Choirs, the Grand Jubilee in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, the Pacific Chorale, Chorus Austin, and the Association of Anglican Musicians.

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Professor Schmidt specializes in European intellectual history and the history of political and social thought from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985) and the editor of What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1996) and Theodor Adorno (2007) and co-editor, with Amelie Rorty, of the Critical Guide to Kant’s Idea for a Universal History (2009). The recipient of a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he also received the James L. Clifford Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, was a Fellow in History at the Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

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Professor Schmidt specializes in European intellectual history and the history of political and social thought from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985) and the editor of What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1996) and Theodor Adorno (2007) and co-editor, with Amelie Rorty, of the Critical Guide to Kant’s Idea for a Universal History (2009). The recipient of a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he also received the James L. Clifford Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, was a Fellow in History at the Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

MORE >

After starting his classical music career as a member of twice GRAMMY® nominated ensemble Seraphic Fire, countertenor Reggie Mobley has since appeared with Academy of Ancient Music, Agave Baroque, Bach Collegium San Diego, Calgary Symphony, Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists, Pacific Music Works, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, TENET, and The Handel + Haydn Society. With the latter, he had the honor of becoming the first Black person to lead H+H in its Bicentennial year. Recent festival appearances include Bachfest Leipzig, Festival Berlioz, Early Music Vancouver, Thüringer Bachwoche, Portland Bach Experience, and the Boston Early Music Festival. 

MORE >

Karen P. Thomas, composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Seattle Pro Musica. Her compositions are performed and broadcast throughout the world, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, NOTUS,  and the Vocal Consort of Brussels. Her works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and KarenPThomas Music (this website), and have been featured at numerous festivals and conferences.

A prize-winning composer, she has received grants from the NEA, The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and Meet the Composer, among numerous others. Among her many commissions are works for the Harvard/Radcliffe Choirs, the Grand Jubilee in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, the Pacific Chorale, Chorus Austin, and the Association of Anglican Musicians.

MORE >