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Johanna "Jody" Hill Simpson founded and, for 16 years, directed the PALS Children’s Chorus (now known as VOICES Boston), and more recently founded and is Artistic Director of Music on Norway Pond, in Hancock, NH.  Her thirty-five years of dedication to the choral arts in New England have created an extraordinary legacy of choral excellence for singers of all ages and continue to produce some of New England’s most compelling and memorable musical experiences for participants and audiences alike.

From very modest beginnings in 1990, the PALS Children’s Chorus grew to become a key collaborator with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, Cantata Singers, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Early Music Festival, and other orchestras in Boston, New York, Washington DC, and at Tanglewood. Simpson’s PALS chorus performed with such artists as Seiji Ozawa, James Levine, Yo Yo Ma, Henri Dutilleux, Tan Dun, Raphael Frubeck DeBurgos, James Conlon, Marek Janowski, Tod Machover, David Hoose, Keith Lockart, and even Nathan Lane and Celine Dion. 

Since moving to New Hampshire in 2006, Simpson has catalyzed the growth of another extraordinary musical community. She founded Music on Norway Pond, which presents a high quality and affordable concert series, often in conjunction with the New England Conservatory.  She conducts the Norway Pond Festival Singers, a chorus of 30-50 men and women, and the Junior Minstrels, a non-auditioned group of children between age 6 and 13, which made its Tanglewood debut in Summer 2017, singing Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Boston Symphony. During that same season, three of her young singers performed Henri Dutilleux's The Shadows of Time with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the fourth set of children she has trained for this piece—including the world premiere twenty years ago. 

Simpson has commissioned and premiered an impressive list of new works, including Mehmet Sanlikol’s Ergenekon, Howard Frazin’s Voice of Isaac, Bret Silverman’s Tree of Life, William Cutter’s Awake the Dawn, and Megan Henderson’s The Police Log.

Jody Hill Simpson and her husband Rick, an accomplished tenor, live in Hancock, New Hampshire, on Norway Pond, with their standard poodles, Pearl and May and their cat, Goldie.

Dr. Ann Howard Jones, 2015 recipient of the Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award, is Professor Emerita of Music at Boston University, where she served for 24 years before her retirement this year. At Boston University, she was director of choral activities, conducted the Symphonic and Chamber Choruses, supervised conducting students in the Concert Chorus and the Women’s Chorale, taught graduate choral conducting, and administered the M.M. and D.M.A. programs in Choral Conducting. Dr. Jones was also the conductor of the B.U. Tanglewood Institute Young Artists’ Vocal Program Chorus, an auditioned ensemble of high school singers who rehearse and perform at Tanglewood in the summer.

Recognized as a distinguished clinician, adjudicator, teacher and conductor, she has led many all-state and regional choruses, workshops and masterclasses in the U.S., Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. She has conducted over 20 All-State choruses. Dr. Jones has been invited to teach and conduct at colleges, universities and conservatories nationwide, and has led conducting masterclasses for the American Guild of Organists, ACDA, MENC, and Chorus America.

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. After Shaw’s death in 1999, Jones was invited to conduct the Robert Shaw Tribute Singers for the American Choral Directors Association conferences in San Antonio and Orlando.

Jones has traveled with a group of Boston University graduate students to Padua and Venice, Italy, and to Oslo and Bergen, Norway, to perform and to study. In 2009, the graduate conducting students joined Jones at the national convention of ACDA in Oklahoma City, where she was invited to prepare and conduct the world premiere of a work by Dominick Argento. The conductors sang in the chorus and assisted in the preparations for the performance.

According to Richard Cornell, professor of music and interim director of the Boston University School of Music, Dr. Jones is “a national force for choral art. With regular annual concerts in Symphony Hall, she has brought the experience of great choral music to thousands. At the School of Music Professor Jones established one of the finest graduate choral conducting programs anywhere and trained a new generation of brilliant conductors, many of whom now hold important academic or professional positions. The work of that new generation of choral directors now extends her legacy.”

Ann Howard Jones is a native of Iowa, and her degrees are from the University of Iowa.

On September 30, 2001, Choral Arts New England recognized Mary Whitney Rowe with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Wells River, Vermont. Beginning in 1951, Mary Rowe blended community singers of northern Vermont and New Hampshire into a chorus that received raves about its musical excellence, whether performing in New England or on tours to England, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, and Poland. Ms. Rowe's particular expertise was to enhance the capabilities of untrained singers, molding them into a fellowship of accomplished and enduring musicians.

Founded in 1947 and under her direction since 1951, the North Country Chorus was shaped in large part by the artistry and spirit of Mary Whitney Rowe. Performing regularly in Wells River, Vermont, Peacham, Vermont, and Littleton, New Hampshire, the chorus delivered a broad range of professionally performed classical music in an area where few other organizations had achieved the same level of artistry and range of musical expression.

The Lifetime Achievement Award of Choral Arts New England is awarded to individuals like Mary Whitney Rowe whose vision and collective spirit enhance both individual singers and their respective communities.

Roberta Humez, founder of Youth Pro Musica, was honored on November 2, 2002, by Choral Arts New England for her gracious and generous cultivation of the spirit of choral music in young people from grades three through 12. See the news story for more about the awards ceremony.

Her goal in founding Youth Pro Musica was to provide children with access to excellence in choral training within the greater Boston area and to present performances and collaborations with other performing organizations by:

• Establishing a training chorus
• Developing an advanced high school ensemble
• Commissioning new works for treble voices
• Nurturing exchange programs with handicapped and disadvantaged persons to share music as broadly as possible
• Providing scholarships to include a wider range of students

These goals have been fulfilled in performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cantata Singers, the Opera Company of Boston, and as part of Revels and American Repertory Theatre performances.

John Bavicchi, director of the Arlington-Belmont Chorale and its predecessor choruses for 44 years and founder and director of the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus for 29 years, was honored on November 1, 2003, by Choral Arts New England for his significant contribution to the cultivation of community choral music. See News and Events for more about the awards ceremony.

John Bavicchi was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1922. Initially trained as a civil engineer, he returned to Boston after serving in the Navy during World War II and entered the New England Conservatory, which awarded him a Bachelor of Music in 1952. Graduate study at Harvard followed, including courses in composition, music history, and choral practice, with teachers that included Walter Piston, Archibald Davidson, and Otto Gombosi.

After holding various teaching posts, Mr. Bavicchi joined the faculty of the Berklee College of Music in 1964, where he still teaches composition, conducting, and analysis as of this writing in 2003.

Mr. Bavicchi's earliest choral conducting experiences included forming a boy's chorus at the Rivers Country Day School and directing the high school chorus in Sharon. He was appointed director of the four-year-old Belmont Community Chorus in 1959, and thereafter also became conductor of the Arlington Philharmonic Chorus. He continued as director after the two organizations merged into the Arlington-Belmont Chorale in 1973, and he assumed additional duties as conductor of the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus after it was formed in 1974 as an audition ensemble drawn from the membership of the large chorus. Mr. Bavicchi retired from the chorale and chamber chorus in 2003 after more than 40 years of distinguished service.

Three hallmarks of John Bavicchi's decades-long career as a choral conductor are the performance of little-known masterpieces by major composers, particularly the choral works of Robert Schumann, and the commission and performance of work by contemporary composers. Both the chorale and the chamber chorus customarily offered at least one premiere a year under Mr. Bavicchi's leadership.

John Bavicchi's gift for inspiring amateurs to perform at a high level is exceptional, and his musical taste and imaginative programming have won him a loyal following of amateur singers who welcome the opportunity to learn unusual and challenging repertory. Of particular note have been several performances, in various venues, of the 1951 Mass by Jeronimas Kacinskas, the dean of Lithuanian composers. Mr. Bavicchi's dedication to the presentation of new music is matched by an extraordinary ability to convince members of a community chorus that not only can they conquer unexpected notes and unusual time signatures, but they can also weld unfamiliar musical elements into satisfying and communicative performances. That his choristers hold John Bavicchi and his values in high esteem is evidenced by their contributions to a special fund in his honor at the Arlington Philharmonic Society to pay for the commissioning of new works.

In addition to directing his own choruses, Mr. Bavicchi has, over the years, enriched the opportunities available to his singers by arranging joint performances with other choral groups, thereby strengthening the wider community of singers.

Mr. Bavicchi is the tenth recipient of Choral Arts New England's Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given in memory of Alfred Nash Patterson and in recognition of those who carry on his work through significant contributions to choral music in New England.

Alice Parker is the recipient of the 2004 Choral Arts New England Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented at a 2:00pm ceremony on Sunday, November 14 at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Each year, Choral Arts honors a musician for exceptional service to choral music and to the choral community in New England. Ms. Parker, who has received four honorary doctorates, and was named Distinguished Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists in 2000, was cited for her enduring commitment to choral music as composer, conductor, teacher and arranger.

Ms. Parker began her conducting career as a teenager and has led community choruses, church choirs, amateurs and professionals. At the urging of her singers and her peers, she founded Melodious Accord, in the belief "that melody is an unparalleled means of communication… that when we use our ears and voices we enrich our lives… and that singing together brings immediate benefits – physical, mental, and spiritual – to those who join in this most participatory of all the arts."

For six decades, Alice Parker has explored melody and rhythm as a means of communication in religious rituals, in the recounting of oral history, in festive celebrations, in imparting cultural values, and in shared pleasure. Focusing on the voice as the ideal instrument for expression in all these contexts, Ms. Parker enjoyed a long collaboration with Robert Shaw. This association resulted in many settings of American folk songs, hymns, and spirituals. Along with her commissioned works, which are many, these settings comprise an enduring repertoire for choruses the world around.

Born in Hadley, MA in 1925, Ms. Parker continues to live on the family farm. There she hosts student and adult workshops, including workshops for young composers, which she conducts at least twice each year.

Each year, Choral Arts New England honors a musician for exceptional service to choral music and to the choral community in New England. Donald Teeters is the recipient of C.A.N.E.’s 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award, presented at a 3:00 p.m. ceremony on Sunday, October 16 at All Saints Parish, Brookline, Mass.

In 2006, Teeters will celebrate his fiftieth anniversary as organist/music director in Episcopal churches in the Boston area. While still an undergraduate at New England Conservatory he was offered the music leadership position at St. Andrew’s Church in Wellesley, where he served for ten years. Since 1967, he has been the principle church musician at All Saints, site of this year’s awards ceremony.

In 1964, Alfred Nash Patterson offered him the position of keyboardist for Chorus pro Musica and later added associate conductor to the title. During the four years Teeters worked for and with Bud Patterson, numerous opportunities to perform at the keyboard and as conductor arose. These included CpM performances in Symphony Hall (Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” as continuo player, the Brahms “Ein Deutsches Requiem,” as organist, Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” as pianist), as well as in Kresge Auditorium at MIT, at the Harvard Club, and in various church concerts, especially at Old South Church where Bud was music director. Teeters also assisted Bud in preparation for several CpM performances with the Boston Symphony, including a Bach “St. John Passion” and Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at Tanglewood. Patterson was instrumental in obtaining a Tanglewood Fellowship for Teeters for the 1967 season, where he served as keyboardist for the Fellowship Singers and assisted in several other musical capacities.

In 1967, Thomas Dunn invited Teeters to join him as associate conductor and rehearsal keyboardist in Dunn’s first season as music director of the Handel and Haydn Society. The following year Teeters was appointed music director of The Cecilia Society (now The Boston Cecilia) and for several years continued with both institutions.

In his work with The Boston Cecilia, Teeters has claimed a special position in relation to the works of G.F. Handel. In 1982, Cecilia began what was never intended to be, but has evolved over time into, a comprehensive survey of Handel’s major dramatic works for chorus. These period instrument performances have elicited highest praise from public and critics alike, and have played an important role in establishing Boston as a major world center for stylistic Handel interpretations and informed performance practice.

Teeters has also led the Boston Cecilia in significant explorations of English music (especially of Benjamin Britten) and American 20th century repertoire, including premieres and commissions from important New England composers. In 1979, he led the first Boston period instrument performance of Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610,” and in 1981, the first American period instrument performance of the “St. John Passion.” In November 2005, Teeters and Cecilia give the Boston premiere and only the second-known U.S. performance of Handel’s classical one act dramatic cantata, “The Choice of Hercules.” Cecilia has recorded in recent years for Koch International and Newport Classic.

Donald Teeters was a member of the New England Conservatory organ department faculty from 1970 to 2002. He received that institution’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004.

This year Choral Arts New England honors Robert De Cormier for his exceptional service to choral music and to the choral community. The award was presented in a ceremony October 22 at First Parish in Weston, Mass.

Now based in Vermont, De Cormier prepares and conducts the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber chorus, which he helped to found. In 2000 he established Counterpoint, an 11-voice professional vocal ensemble. That same year the conductor, composer and arranger received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council.

In 1995 he began a two-year project based on music produced in the concentration camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia. With generous arts funding, including the first grant awarded by the Spielberg Foundation, he mounted and conducted productions of Brundibar, a children's opera by Hans Krasa, and The Emperor of Atlantis, an opera written by Viktor Ullmann. The operas toured throughout Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, culminating in a performance at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.

A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, De Cormier served for seventeen years as music director of the New York Choral Society. Other conducting engagements have taken him from Broadway and opera to the Berkshire Choral Institute and the Zimriya World Assembly of Choirs in Israel.

His choral works, Legacy, Four Sonnets to Orpheus, Shout For Joy and Under A Greenwood Tree, were premiered at Carnegie Hall by the New York Choral Society. Spiritual Suite, commissioned by the West Village Chorale, premiered in New York in 1991. He has also arranged extensively, from African-American spirituals to American and international folk songs.

De Cormier's television credits include a three part series on Choral Folk Songs for the BBC and an Emmy award-winning special with Harry Belafonte. He was the choral director for a combined concert, TV special and recording for PBS starring Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, conducted by James Levine, as well as Christmas at Carnegie with Kathleen Battle and Frederica Von Stade, conducted by Andre Previn.

This year Choral Arts New England honors Craig Smith for his exceptional service to choral music and to the New England choral community.  The award was presented by Choral Arts New England Chair Andrea O'Connell in a ceremony on Sunday, October 28, 2007, at King's Chapel Parish House in Boston Mass.

Craig Smith died after a long struggle with illness on November 14, 2007. Choral Arts New England joins many others in mourning his death as well as celebrating his life, during which he has brought great beauty into the lifes of many and inspired choral performance at the highest levels. Memorials have been posted at Emmanuel Music andNew England Conservatory (and many other places).

Craig Smith was the founder of Emmanuel Music and has served as its Artistic Director for 35 years. In that time, his most famous achievement (but by no means his sole accomplishment) has been to lead performances of all of the Cantatas of J.S. Bach, one each week, in the context of the Sunday worship service at Boston's Emmanuel Church. He has done this at the highest artistic level, building a national reputation for his chorus, orchestra, and performance style. He has provided an example of the highest level of the choral arts and in the process has nutured the careers of numerous choral singers and soloists.

Unfortunately, Mr. Smith was unable to receive the award in person. Pat Krol of Emmanuel Music accepted the award and read a statement on his behalf:

“I want to thank Choral Arts New England for this prestigious award. I'm sorry my health does not allow me to be at this gathering today. I'm deeply honored by this award and honored to be in such distinguished company. Many of the previous recipients were colleagues—Blanche Moise, Don Teeters, and Dan Pinkham—and I treasure my years studying with Lorna Cooke De Varon.

“Choral music is an important part of New England culture. We are lucky in this part of the world having great choruses doing great music, but mostly we treasure the large number of sophisticated choral singers who have made our lives richer in the pursuit of this great literature.”