Dr. Jamie Spillane is Director of Choral Studies at the University of Connecticut where he oversees a choral program with seven choirs, directs the UConn Concert Choir and Chamber Singers, and teaches undergraduate through doctoral choral conducting and choral literature classes. Dr. Spillane’s research lies in the study of choral festival music and his articles have appeared in the ACDA Choral Journal.
Dan Perkins, music director/conductor, is Professor Emeritus at Plymouth State University, where in 2007 he was appointed the first Stevens-Bristow Distinguished Professor. He is music director of the Manchester Choral Society and Orchestra and founder and music director of the New Hampshire Master Chorale. He is cofounder, with Dr. Patricia Lindberg, of the Educational Theatre Collaborative.
A passionate advocate for new music, Perkins’ ensembles have premiered over 30 works by Dr. Jonathan Santore, Oliver Caplan, Kim Andre Arnesen, and others. He has led international performance tours in more than 30 countries with his various choirs, including the New Hampshire Friendship Chorus. He was principal guest conductor for the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet in Hanoi and was also on the faculty of the Bassi Brugnatelli International Conducting and Singing Symposium in Robbiate, Italy. He is an international guest conductor and choral clinician with past engagements including South Korea, Pakistan, China, Ecuador, South Africa, Chile, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. Perkins conducted at Carnegie Hall for Mid-America Productions and in 2024 will conduct The Unarmed Child by Michael Bussewitz-Quarm at Lincoln Center. Perkins is also the director and pianist for Trio Veritas, a chamber music ensemble whose configuration changes with unique and varied repertoire.
He holds the degrees Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in Choral Music from the University of Southern California, and Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Brigham Young University. He continued his studies as a Fulbright scholar in Helsinki, Finland.
Dr. André de Quadros has been described as “one of the most inspiring human rights educators of our time” by the Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights. He is a human rights activist, conductor, ethnomusicologist, music educator, and writer whose work has taken him to the most diverse settings in 40 countries including professional ensembles, projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, and victims of sexual violence, torture, and trauma.
Dr. André de Quadros is a professor of music at Boston University. He leads the following ensembles: VOICES 21C (Boston), the Manado State University Choir (Indonesia), and the Muslim Choral Ensemble (Sri Lanka). In addition, he directs the following choral projects: Common Ground Voices, an Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding and reconciliation initiative, Common Ground Voices / La Frontera (Mexico-US border), and the World Muslim Choral Ensemble (Sri Lanka).
Dr de Quadros has served ACDA, IFCM, and NCCO in governance positions. He has numerous books, book chapters, and journal articles to his credit, as well as more than 50 choral editions. He is the director of The Choral Commons, a media platform. He has received several awards including from ACDA and Chorus America. In 2019, he was a visiting faculty member at the University of Cambridge, and in 2024, at the University of Melbourne.
Choral Arts New England’s 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award is being made to Dr. Daniel F. Perkins, music director, conductor, professor of music, advocate for new music and educator.
One of the pathfinders for African-American choral conductors, Dr. Peter Bagley is Professor Emeritus of Music and former Special Assistant to the Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut. He received a B.S. in Music Education at the Crane School of Music, State University of New York at Potsdam, and his M.M. and D.M. in Choral Music under Julius Herford at Indiana University.
Dr. Bagley began his music teaching career in 1957 in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was the first African-American teacher in the public schools. While teaching in Greenwich he also sang with the Collegiate Chorale in New York City, led by Robert Shaw. Dr. Bagley served for 16 years as Professor of Music at SUNY New Paltz, and was appointed Director of Choral Activities at UConn in 1984. He led the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus in New London from around 1995 through at least 2001, was one of the key mentors in the founding of Con Brio in 1997, and throughout his career lent his support and inspiration to choral musicians throughout the state.
Dr. Bagley has been invited as guest conductor and choral clinician for numerous festivals throughout the country, including at least 14 all-state choirs. He conducted the MENC All-Eastern Division Chorus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and launched his international career as choral clinician with a ten-city tour of New Zealand sponsored by the New Zealand Choral Federation. In 2011, he traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to conduct the Nairobi Chamber Choir and the Safaricom Community Choir and Orchestra in a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in June 1997, conducting the University of Connecticut Festival Chorus and Orchestra in Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem.
Dr. Bagley has been an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, and in 1990 was named Connecticut Choral Educator of the Year. At the 2009 national ACDA convention, he appeared on a panel with five other esteemed conductors entitled “Legends in the American Choral Tradition." He has also been an active member of the Boards of Chorus America and the Hall Johnson Institute.
Active in Greater Boston's choral community for nearly 40 years, John Finney has long been recognized as one of the area's premiere musicians. Throughout his distinguished career, he has played a leading role in four distinct choral genres—professional choirs, adult choral societies, collegiate choirs, and church choirs—while simultaneously building a stellar reputation as an organist and orchestral conductor. He has brought great choral music to audiences everywhere, and has inspired and educated singers at all levels—church choirs and parishioners, college students, community volunteers, and world-renowned professionals—to bring that music to life.
Finney was Associate Conductor and Chorusmaster of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society for 24 years, from 1990 to 2013. He was Conductor of the Heritage Chorale in Framingham from 1987 until his retirement last year; for 34 concert seasons, he led the Chorale in acclaimed performances of major choral works with orchestra as well as lighter Pops programs, and he directed the Chorale during three international concert tours. Named Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Boston College in 1999, Finney has been Director of the University Chorale of Boston College since 1993 and Director of the Boston College Symphony Orchestra since 1999. He continues to serve as Director of Music at the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church, a position he has held since 1984.
An internationally known organist and expert on early music, Finney holds degrees in organ performance from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and The Boston Conservatory. He has served on the organ faculty of The Boston Conservatory and has taught at the Academy for Early Music in Bressanone, Italy. Since 2013, he has served as principal keyboardist, as well as Conductor and Choral Director, at Blue Hill Bach in Blue Hill, Maine.
The award is presented at the Choral Arts New England 2021 Awards Ceremony (no ceremony was held in 2020 due to the pandemic).
Brooks’s broad vision for music-making has been passed on to her students, who can be found in positions of musical leadership throughout New England and around the world. Among her students are the founding conductors of the Grammy-‐nominated vocal ensembles Conspirare, Roomful of Teeth, and Seraphic Fire, the Music Directors of major New England chorus such as Chorus pro Musica, CONCORA, and Seraphim Singers, and numerous leaders of church and religious music programs. In a recent survey, alumni often cited her as their primary reason for attending Yale and as the person who influenced them the most.
Brooks has served on the faculties of Smith and Amherst Colleges and was director of choral music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has been cited by the Yale School of Music for cultural leadership in music and has received alumni awards for distinguished work in her field from both Mount Holyoke College and Temple University. The Connecticut chapter of the ACDA honored her with its 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Born in 1947, Walker grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut and is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. She holds B.A., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees in music composition. In high school (Abbot Academy/Phillips Academy Andover) and in college, she performed in vocal octets for which she created all of the choral arrangements. In 1982, she relinquished a faculty position at Oberlin College Conservatory to pursue a career as a full-time composer.
The music of Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences for its energy, beauty, reverence, drama, and humor. Walker’s catalog includes over 350 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voice. A special interest has been dramatic works that combine music with readings, acting, and movement. Her work appeals to modern sensibilities yet is also traditional and accessible.
“My pieces always have melody and form and a rhythm that’s right there for you,” she says.
Among Walker's more popular works is "Songs for Women's Voices," a cycle of choral works based on six poems by the American poet May Swenson, and "A Vision of Hills," a piano trio that Walker says was inspired by her experiences living in Vermont.
Walker is the recipient of the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vermont Arts Council and the 2008 Athenaeum Award for Achievement in the Arts and Humanities from the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. In 2012, she was elected a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.
For nearly 30 years, Walker lived on a dairy farm in Braintree, Vermont. She now divides her time between her childhood hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut and Randolph, Vermont. Over the decades, she has traveled to many states to work with instrumental and choral ensembles, soloists, and educational institutions as they rehearse and perform her music. A number of these visits have developed into ongoing relationships. In 2018, Walker was named Composer‐in‐Residence for the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra in Petoskey, Michigan.
The Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented on November 4 at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.—about halfway between Walker’s current bases in Vermont and Connecticut—in a ceremony that will include performances of her works by the Mt. Holyoke Glee Club and Mt. Holyoke Chamber Singers.
Dr. Joshua Jacobson, 2016 recipient of the Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award, is the Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Northeastern University, where he served nine years as Music Department Chairman and six years as the Bernard Stotsky Professor of Jewish Cultural Studies. He is the founder and director of the Zamir Chorale of Boston, a world-renowned ensemble, specializing in Hebrew music. He is also Visiting Professor and Senior Consultant in the School of Jewish Music at Hebrew College.
Prof. Jacobson is past President of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. He has conducted workshops on choral music for various groups, including the American Choral Directors Association, and has guest conducted a number of ensembles, including the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Bulgarian National Symphony and Chorus, the New England Conservatory Orchestra and the Boston Lyric Opera Company. He has also written articles on various aspects of choral music, and over one hundred published compositions and arrangements.
He is the conductor and host of the PBS film, Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland. His book, Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Art of Cantillation, published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2002, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. He is co-author of Translations and Annotations of Choral Repertoire—Volume IV: Hebrew Texts, published by earthsongs in 2009.
In 1989 he spent four weeks in Yugoslavia as a Distinguished Professor under the auspices of the Fulbright program. In 1994 Hebrew College awarded him the Benjamin Shevach Award for Distinguished Achievement in Jewish Educational Leadership, and in 2004 the Cantors Assembly presented him with its prestigious “Kavod Award."
Richard Dyer wrote in the Boston Globe (June 11, 2002) “Jacobson has a gift for programming that is instructive and entertaining, and more often than not, the Zamir Chorale performs works that music lovers would be unlikely to hear anyplace else.”
Prof. Jacobson holds a Bachelors degree in Music from Harvard College, a Masters in Choral Conducting from the New England Conservatory, a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Cincinnati, and a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from Hebrew College.
