Conductors
ELLEN GILSON VOTH
As conductor and composer, Dr. Ellen Gilson Voth is honored to guest conduct CONCORA's inaugural BIG SING. Voth’s conducting spans professional, community, collegiate and secondary-level ensembles throughout the Northeast, in all cases merging her infectious passion for musical artistry with her heart for singers and audiences. Last year (2024-25) Voth serves as guest conducting faculty at UCONN (Collegium Musicum) and as Director of the Festival Chorus; she continues her role as Artistic Director of the Farmington Valley Chorale, a large chorale of 80-plus members which partners with professionals and community arts organizations for major performances of works from the Baroque to the present, in the greater Hartford area. For seven years, Voth served as Artistic Director of Novi Cantori, a professional chamber choir based in greater Springfield, MA, balancing traditional and innovative programming with new ventures in community outreach.
A regularly commissioned composer by ensembles across the US, Voth’s works are published by Oxford University Press, ECS Publishing, Graphite Publishing, Colla Voce, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Walton Music. Voth is the winner of the 2022 American Prize for Choral Composition (shorter works), for “Across the empty square”; the 2022 winner of the ACDA Pearl Prize, for “Standing Tall”; the 2021/22 co-winner of the Ithaca College Choral Composition Prize, for “I had no time to hate”; and the 2020 Cincinnati Camerata Composition Prize, for “Above gravity”. She has also been a finalist in the ACDA Brock competition for professional composers.
Voth is a singing member of CONCORA, a regular guest conductor and clinician, and performs frequently as a pianist and organist. She serves on the Board of Choral Arts New England, a grant-awarding agency for choirs in the six New England states, and has served in multiple roles on the CT-ACDA state board. Voth received her doctoral degree (DMA) from The Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford.
A regularly commissioned composer by ensembles across the US, Voth’s works are published by Oxford University Press, ECS Publishing, Graphite Publishing, Colla Voce, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Walton Music. Voth is the winner of the 2022 American Prize for Choral Composition (shorter works), for “Across the empty square”; the 2022 winner of the ACDA Pearl Prize, for “Standing Tall”; the 2021/22 co-winner of the Ithaca College Choral Composition Prize, for “I had no time to hate”; and the 2020 Cincinnati Camerata Composition Prize, for “Above gravity”. She has also been a finalist in the ACDA Brock competition for professional composers.
Voth is a singing member of CONCORA, a regular guest conductor and clinician, and performs frequently as a pianist and organist. She serves on the Board of Choral Arts New England, a grant-awarding agency for choirs in the six New England states, and has served in multiple roles on the CT-ACDA state board. Voth received her doctoral degree (DMA) from The Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford.
CHRIS SHEPARD
Now in his tenth year as Artistic Director of the Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA), Chris Shepard also serves as Music Director of the Worcester Chorus in Massachusetts. In May 2024, Chris launched THE COMPLETE BACH, a 132-concert project to present live performances of all of J.S. Bach’s works for the first time ever in America. This monumental undertaking, under the auspices of Music Worcester, was inspired by Chris’s BACH2010 project, in which his Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra performed all of Bach’s choral cantatas in Sydney, Australia. THE COMPLETE BACH brings together local ensembles as well as internationally recognized performers such as pianists Jeremy Denk and Simone Dinnerstein, and Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music.
His musical interests hardly stop in the eighteenth century, however. Chris has conducted much of the most prominent largescale choral-orchestral repertoire, including major works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Poulenc, and Britten; a career highlight was the 2022 performance by the Worcester and Masterwork Choruses of Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall. He has also performed many works by contemporary composers and has premiered works by such composers as Ricky Ian Gordon, Gwyneth Walker, Martin Sedek, Robert Convery, Anna K Jacobs, and Amy Bernon. His choirs have collaborated with a number of orchestras, such as the Juilliard Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico, and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, in venues that include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall in New York, as well as the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Chris has prepared choirs for major international conductors, including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simone Young, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and William Boughton, as well as for Broadway legend Patti Lupone and Ray Davies of the Kinks. For a decade, Chris was conductor of the Masterwork Chorus in New Jersey, with whom he performed Handel’s Messiah annually at Carnegie Hall; he also led the Dessoff Choir in New York City from 2010 to 2016. Chris made his conducting debut with the New Haven Symphony in 2015.
A committed music educator, Chris has served on the faculty of the Taft School, Sydney Grammar School, Hotchkiss Summer Portals, and Holy Cross College. He founded the Litchfield County Children’s Choir in 1990, and has conducted numerous middle and high school regional and All-State choirs in New England, New York and Australia. He presented two documentaries with SBS-TV, an Australian national public television network, and has given several presentations at conferences for American Choral Directors Association and Australian National Kodàly Association. Chris has been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its five-decade Bach cantata project, and he currently serves as Music Director of St John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut.
A pianist and keyboard continuist, Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School, the Yale School of Music (where he studied choral conducting with Marguerite Brooks) and the University of Sydney. He researched the performance history of Bach’s B Minor Mass in New York City for his PhD in Musicology; his dissertation won the American Choral Directors Association’s 2012 Julius Herford Prize for outstanding doctoral thesis in choral music.
His musical interests hardly stop in the eighteenth century, however. Chris has conducted much of the most prominent largescale choral-orchestral repertoire, including major works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Poulenc, and Britten; a career highlight was the 2022 performance by the Worcester and Masterwork Choruses of Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall. He has also performed many works by contemporary composers and has premiered works by such composers as Ricky Ian Gordon, Gwyneth Walker, Martin Sedek, Robert Convery, Anna K Jacobs, and Amy Bernon. His choirs have collaborated with a number of orchestras, such as the Juilliard Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico, and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, in venues that include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall in New York, as well as the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Chris has prepared choirs for major international conductors, including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simone Young, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and William Boughton, as well as for Broadway legend Patti Lupone and Ray Davies of the Kinks. For a decade, Chris was conductor of the Masterwork Chorus in New Jersey, with whom he performed Handel’s Messiah annually at Carnegie Hall; he also led the Dessoff Choir in New York City from 2010 to 2016. Chris made his conducting debut with the New Haven Symphony in 2015.
A committed music educator, Chris has served on the faculty of the Taft School, Sydney Grammar School, Hotchkiss Summer Portals, and Holy Cross College. He founded the Litchfield County Children’s Choir in 1990, and has conducted numerous middle and high school regional and All-State choirs in New England, New York and Australia. He presented two documentaries with SBS-TV, an Australian national public television network, and has given several presentations at conferences for American Choral Directors Association and Australian National Kodàly Association. Chris has been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its five-decade Bach cantata project, and he currently serves as Music Director of St John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut.
A pianist and keyboard continuist, Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School, the Yale School of Music (where he studied choral conducting with Marguerite Brooks) and the University of Sydney. He researched the performance history of Bach’s B Minor Mass in New York City for his PhD in Musicology; his dissertation won the American Choral Directors Association’s 2012 Julius Herford Prize for outstanding doctoral thesis in choral music.
Workshop Presenters
SARAH K. ARMSTRONG
Sarah has served the Hartford Arts Community for over 25 years as an artist, educator, director, and administrator. After earning her Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, Sarah moved to Chicago where she began her professional singing career. Starting as a member of the chorus at the Lyric Opera of Chicago for five seasons, she spent another five years as a solo artist performing both domestically and abroad. In 1998, Sarah settled in the Hartford area and spent the next 25 years as an artist, arts educator, and administrator in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. Sarah was named a Surdna Arts Fellow in 2006, a Shining Star in Teaching Excellence in 2011 and was awarded the Harold Grinspoon Award for Teaching Excellence in 2016. Sarah was a 2018 recipient of the Rod Clarke Endowment to Support Advanced Faculty Degrees and earned a Master of Arts in Theater Education from the University of Northern Colorado. In 2021, she was the recipient of the J.P. Mandler Teaching Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching and was acknowledged by the University of Chicago for excellence in teaching and mentorship. These honors also allowed her to teach and perform in Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, Italy, and Africa. Sarah is currently on the voice faculty at Central Connecticut State University, a founding member of The Halcyon Duo, performing with classical guitarist and composer Thomas Schuttenhelm, a member of Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA), Voce, and serves as a section leader for both the Hartford Chorale and the Asylum Hill Congregational Church (AHCC) Sanctuary Choir. Sarah and her husband Dylan are the newly appointed co-chairs of the AHCC Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival, a time-honored tradition of music and pageantry in Hartford. Sarah is honored to be Hartford Chorale’s next Executive Director, and to further the arts here in Hartford, the city she loves so much. Sarah and Dylan reside in the Historic West End with their two cats, Pippa and Tobey.
CONSTANCE CHASE
Constance Chase is an adjunct professor in applied voice at Western Connecticut State University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts. Her private voice students are state and national award winners of NATS, MTNA and NFAA competitions. A lyric soprano and accomplished soloist in recital and chamber works in the U.S. and Germany, Ms. Chase also performs as a professional choral artist, most recently at Lincoln Center under the batons of Gerard Schwarz, Louis Langree, Nicholas McGegan, and Jane Glover. She is co-author with the late Shirlee Emmons of Prescriptions for Choral Excellence, Oxford University Press (2006). She presents workshops and master classes for NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing), ACDA (American Choral Directors Association), AGO (American Guild of Organists), and currently serves as Governor, Connecticut District, NATS. Director of the West Point Glee Club since 1999, Ms. Chase has directed the renowned college choir in performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, conducted national concert tours, and multiple recordings, including Mansions of the Lord for the closing credits of the Paramount feature film, We Were Soldiers; the CD/DVD Stand Ye Steady; a PBS live concert production with pianist Marina Arsenijevic and the West Point Band entitled Marina at West Point; and the song ‘Til the Last Shot’s Fired, with country artist Trace Adkins, which they performed live with Mr. Adkins at the 2009 Academy of Country Music Awards show in Las Vegas. Under her preparation, the Glee Club garnered critical praise from the New York Times for its “robust and well-prepared singing” in a 2008 Carnegie Hall performance with the Opera Orchestra of New York, Eve Queler, Director, of the Rimsky-Korsakov opera, The Tsar’s Bride. Ms. Chase is the Artistic Director of the Connecticut Chamber Choir. Under her direction since 2008, recent seasons included the ensemble’s 2015 U.S. premiere of Donald Fraser's stunning arrangement for chamber choir and strings of Elgar's Sea Pictures, its 2015 performance at the inaugural ChoralFestUSA at Symphony Space, its 2011 New York City debut at St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s annual A City Singing at Christmas; concert performances of J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Haydn’s Paukenmesse and Lord Nelson Mass, the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems, Bernstein’s MASS; and programs of chamber choir repertoire spanning the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries. Ms. Chase holds the B.M., magna cum laude, from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Zertifikat from Goethe Institut, Schwäbisch Hall, Germany, and the M.A. in Voice Performance from Hunter College—City University of New York, where she was awarded the Agnes M. Duffy Prize. She is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda.
Pianist
JAMES R. BARRY
James R. Barry has been the accompanist for the Hartford Chorale since 1995, serving under three conductors and numerous guest conductors, and accompanying the Chorale on five international tours. He is Minister of Music at St. James’ Church, Glastonbury, and staff accompanist for several area school systems. In addition to earning degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, The Hartt School, and Yale University, Mr. Barry studied organ with Edward Clark and Thomas Murray, conducting with Marguerite Brooks, and organ improvisation at Salisbury Cathedral. He is a 2013 graduate of the UConn Nonprofit Leadership Program, Encore!Hartford.
He was Director of Artistic Operations at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and Coordinator of the Jackie McLean International Festival of the Arts. For fourteen years, he was Canon Precentor at Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, overseeing an active music program of choirs and concert events.
Mr. Barry was organ soloist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Aaron Copland Classical Conversations concert, and has played organ recitals at St. Thomas Church and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, as well as Washington National Cathedral. Choirs and soloists under his direction have collaborated on programs with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Connecticut Opera, Hartford Chorale, Hartford Stage Company, South Church Music Series, Trinity College Concert Choir, and Manchester Chorale. He served as American Guild of Organists Region I Councillor and three terms as Dean of the Greater Hartford Chapter. He was chair of the CONCORA Friends of Bach Committee, Director-at-Large of the Association of Anglican Musicians, and trustee of The Julius Hartt Musical Foundation.
He was Director of Artistic Operations at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and Coordinator of the Jackie McLean International Festival of the Arts. For fourteen years, he was Canon Precentor at Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, overseeing an active music program of choirs and concert events.
Mr. Barry was organ soloist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Aaron Copland Classical Conversations concert, and has played organ recitals at St. Thomas Church and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, as well as Washington National Cathedral. Choirs and soloists under his direction have collaborated on programs with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Connecticut Opera, Hartford Chorale, Hartford Stage Company, South Church Music Series, Trinity College Concert Choir, and Manchester Chorale. He served as American Guild of Organists Region I Councillor and three terms as Dean of the Greater Hartford Chapter. He was chair of the CONCORA Friends of Bach Committee, Director-at-Large of the Association of Anglican Musicians, and trustee of The Julius Hartt Musical Foundation.