Francisco J. Núñez , a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, is a composer, conductor, visionary, and leading figure in music education.  In 1988 he founded the Young People’s Chorus of New York City™ to provide children of all ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds with a safe haven for personal and artistic growth and to date has changed the lives of thousands of young people. Mr. Núñez is currently working with the Dominican Republic to create a national children’s choral movement inspired by YPC to unite the country’s children—rich and poor.  Among Mr. Núñez’s many other awards are an ASCAP Concert Music Award, the New York Choral Society's Choral Excellence Award, and the 2009 La Sociedad Coral Latinoamericana’s Man of the Year Award.

 

Guest Conductors

Philip Brunelle, a native of Faribault, Minnesota, is the artistic director and founder of VocalEssence described by NEA former chairman Dana Gioia as “one of the irreplaceable music ensembles of our time.” With an inborn spirit of adventure that has driven his lifelong enthusiasm for all forms of music, Mr. Brunelle requested and received a vocal score of Handel’s Messiah for Christmas at the age of six. Today, he has become a mainstay in the international choral music community with countless awards and honors for his contributions, such as a Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, an honorary member of the British Empire, a Kodály Medal from Hungary, and Chorus America’s highest honor-- the Michael Korn Founder’s Award for Development of the Choral Art.

Dr. Janet Galván, professor of music at Ithaca College, conducts the Ithaca College Women's Chorale, the Ithaca College Chorus, is artistic director for the Ithaca Children's Choir, and is a highly sought-after guest conductor and clinician in North America, Europe, and South America. She has conducted national, regional, and all-state choruses throughout the United States as well as in concert halls in Ireland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, Canada, and Spain. Recognized as one of the country’s leading conducting teachers, her students have received top honors in both the graduate and undergraduate divisions of the ACDA’s biennial National Choral Conducting Competition.  Dr. Galván, a former member of the Grammy Award-winning Robert Shaw Festival Singers, was a faculty member for YPC’s first Transient Glory Symposium in New York in 2005.

Grant Gershon, currently in his 10th season as music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, is equally at home with symphonic and choral music, opera and musical theater. In 2001 he was appointed music director of the ensemble, which The Los Angeles Times proclaimed as “the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon." During his tenure he has led all major choral works as well as world premieres of compositions by John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Christopher Rouse, Steve Reich, and Chinary Ung among others. He has been nominated for two Grammy Awards and has worked with many of today’s top conductors. Last season he made his Los Angeles Opera debut conducting Verdi’s La Traviata, and this year made his Santa Fe Opera debut in Peter Sellars’ production of Vivaldi’s Griselda.