Join us for an unforgettable performance that explores the full range of human experience, from joy to hardship, while celebrating resilience and strength. 

Enhanced by stunning artistic projections, this performance showcases Rutter Requiem, performed by chorus and orchestra and conducted by Sandra Snow. This piece offers a unique and deeply personal perspective on cultural identity and resilience. 

The first half of the concert will highlight the National Concert Chorus, including works by Moira Smiley, Jocelyn Hagen, Kyle Pederson, and more. 

SANDRA SNOW, GUEST CONDUCTOR

As conductor, pedagogue, and scholar, Sandra Snow is widely acknowledged as one who brings singers of all ages and abilities to artful performance through an understanding of the music and its context in the world around them.  As Professor of Choral Conducting and Music education at the Michigan State University College of Music, the MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble has appeared as featured performers at American Choral Directors Association conventions at state, regional, and national levels. As guest conductor, she travels extensively in North America and abroad.
In 2017 Snow created mirabai, a project-based professional women’s chorus. mirabai features alumna associated with the MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble. mirabai was a featured ensemble at the Texas Choral Director’s Association conference in 2018. The inaugural recording, Ecstatic Songs, was released in 2018. mirabai will open the 2020 conference of the Southwest Division of the American Choral Director’s Association.

Snow is the Chair of the MSU Music Education Area and the Artistic Director of the CME Institute for Choral Teacher Education produced annually at MSU. Snow is author of the DVD "Conducting-Teaching: Real World Strategies for Success" published by GIA (2009), a resource for conductor-teachers at all levels of teaching. She edits the choral music series In High Voice published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Snow is a recipient of the Michigan State University William J. Beal Award for Outstanding Faculty, the MSU Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Dortha J. and John D. Withrow award for Excellence in Teaching.

ANDREW MINEAR, GUEST CONDUCTOR

With appearances across the United States, Dr. Andrew Minear is an active conductor, music educator, and choir leader. Dr. Minear is the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Orlando Sings where he conducts the Orlando Sings Symphonic Chorus and the professional vocal ensemble Solaria. He also serves as Director of Music Ministry at All Saints Episcopal Church of Winter Park. Recent or upcoming engagements include Opera Orlando’s production of All is Calm, the National Concert Chorus at Carnegie Hall, the National Youth Chorus at Carnegie Hall, the Seoul Oratorio Festival in South Korea, the American Choral Directors Association Southern Region SSAA Honor Choir, Music and Worship Arts weeks in Lake Junaluska and Montreat, and ten all-state choirs. He has conducted multiple summers at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan and led the Florida Ambassadors of Music on performance tours of Europe. Before it was cancelled due to the pandemic, Minear was one of only 40 choral leaders in the world selected to present at the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Minear’s passion for expressive music-making has been cultivated through two decades of experience in children’s, church, community, middle school, high school, collegiate, and professional choral settings.

Previously, Dr. Minear was the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Alabama where he conducted University Singers and University Chorus, oversaw the graduate choral conducting program, and taught courses in conducting and choral literature. The UA University Singers performed at the 2018 Alabama Music Educators Association conference, and performances of choral-orchestral works included Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Bach’s Missa Brevis in A, Mozart’s Requiem, and the southeastern premier of Jocelyn Hagen’s multi-media symphony, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Alabama, Minear pursued a doctorate degree in choral conducting at Michigan State University. He served as the director of the MSU Campus Choir and assistant director of the MSU Men’s Glee Club. Under his leadership, the Campus Choir increased in size to over eighty singers and performed their first choral-orchestral work, Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances, with the MSU Concert Orchestra. Michigan State University named Minear a University Distinguished Fellow, and his doctoral project was a study of Graduate Choral Literature Curricula and Pedagogy.

Over the course of fourteen years in the Orlando-area public schools, Andrew Minear taught middle school and high school Chorus, Music History, Keyboard, Musical Theater, and AP Music Theory. He was the founding Director of Choirs at Lake Buena Vista High School; and during his six years as Choral Director at Dr. Phillips High School, home of the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet for Orange County Public Schools, the Chorus Department grew from 100 to over 240 singers. The DPHS Concert Choir performed with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, and Minear’s students were selected over 180 times for All-State and ACDA Honor Choirs. Cora Bella, the advanced SSAA choir, performed to acclaim at State (2011), Southern Division (2012), and National (2013) Conferences of the American Choral Directors Association.

He holds memberships with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), Chorus America, the International Federation of Choral Music, the National Association for Music Education, and the Royal School of Church Music. He has served as Associate Editor of The Choral Scholar, the Journal of the National Collegiate Choral Organization, and on the boards of Alabama ACDA, Florida ACDA, the Florida Vocal Association, and the Michigan School Vocal Music Association.

Dr. Minear has attended conducting workshops with Rodney Eichenberger, Simon Halsey and Helmuth Rilling; and he was recognized as a finalist for the 2015 American Prize in Conducting. Dr. Minear received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting from Michigan State University where he studied with Dr. David Rayl, Dr. Jonathan Reed, and Dr. Sandra Snow. He received his Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music Education from Florida State University where he studied with Dr. Judy Bowers, Dr. Kevin Fenton, and Dr. André Thomas. He holds a Certificate in Grant Writing and Nonprofit Management through the University of Central Florida.

BRANDON BOYD, GUEST CONDUCTOR

Dr. Brandon A. Boyd is the Mary M. and Harry L. Smith Endowed Chair. He is the Director of Choral Activities, Graduate Choral Conducting Program, and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Missouri, where he conducts MU University Singers, Sankofa Chorale, and Choral Union Symphonic Chorus. In addition to his conducting duties at the university, he teaches graduate courses in choral conducting, choral literature, and choral arranging. 

As a proponent of choral singing to build community, his research interests include organizing choirs for the homeless, identifying the social and physical effects of choral singing on senior citizens, creating authentic field experiences for music therapy and choral music education students. For three years, Dr. Boyd co-directed three choral community partnerships in Florida: The Tallahassee Senior Choir, RAA Middle School Partnership Choir (university students and middle school singers), and the MTC Women's Prison Glee Club (university students singing with women housed in a correctional facility).

As an active composer and arranger, his music is sung regularly by ensembles throughout the United States and abroad. He is also the curator and editor of the "Brandon A. Boyd Choral Series," a choral series with Hinshaw Music Publications helping promote exciting and innovative works composed by both established and new composers and arrangers. His music also appears in the catalogs of Gentry Publications, Hinshaw Music Company, MorningStar, GIA, and Kjos Music Press. In addition, he is the Executive Choral Editor of Gentry Publications.  

As a global collaborator in the orchestral world, Dr. Boyd has served as chorus master, assistant conductor, and guest pianist with the London Symphony in London, England. He prepared the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Vokalensemble for Maestro Alan Gilbert for multiple productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, in Hamburg and Kiel, Germany. In the U.S., he has guest conducted the Nashville Symphony, Missouri Symphony, and the St. Louis Symphony. He has made multiple performances at Carnegie in the capacity of guest conductor, composer, and collaborative pianist. 

Dr. Boyd served as guest faculty at the Universidad Católica Boliviana - San Pablo of the Unidad Academica Regional Tarija to provide conducting workshops, in addition to serving as guest conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra, Sociedad Corla Andaluz, Symphonic Orchestra in a presentation of American music at the Historic Casa de la Cultutura de Tarija (Tarija's House of Culture). He also was a guest professor at the Universidad Evangelica in Santa Cruz, Boliviana. The Partners of the Americas sponsored both university partnerships.  

Dr. Boyd served as Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s Composer-in-Residence and Community Engagement Leader for their program Giving Voice to the Voiceless. The Chorale premiered a work commissioned by the SFDC, I Search, during their Summer Justice Concert Series. He served as assistant conductor, pre-concert lecturer, and guest pianist. He set to music a text written by "Poet V," a young participant in the Voces de Libertad program at the Santa Fe County Youth Development Center. His duties also included organizing and conducting the Interfaith Community Shelter Street Choir, thus creating a safe place for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness within the Santa Fe community. Other commissioning partners include Choirs of America Nationals for Top Choirs at Carnegie, Southwestern Adventist University, Florida State University/Tallahassee Community Chorus, New Mexico Music Educators Association, and the University of Nebraska-Kearney. 

He holds two degrees from Florida State University (Ph.D. in choral music education and M.M. in choral conducting) and earned a B.S. in music education (emphasis in piano) from Tennessee State University. He is a proud member of the Phi Mu Alpha Music Fraternity, Inc., Pi Kappa Lambda, American Choral Directors' Association (ACDA), National Association for Music Education (NAfME), National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), American Guild of Organists (AGO), and Chorus America. Dr. Boyd also serves as a member of the National ACDA Composition Initiative committee.

PROGRAM

Monday APRIL 14, 2025 at 7:30 PM
CARNEGIE HALL

National Masterwork Chorus 
RUTTER REQUIEM
Sandra Snow, Guest Conductor

National Concert Chorus 
Brandon Boyd, Guest Conductor
Andrew Minear, Guest Conductor
GARRETT Sing Out, My Soul!
SMILEY Haiku
CHO Evocation (Mon-Nee-Joh)
HAGEN One Step
PEDERSON Be The Love
BOYD Come and Go (To the Land)