President

Dr. Robert P. Eaton is founder and director  of the Assabet Valley Mastersingers and the Assabet Valley Chambersingers, Choral Director at Algonquin Regional High School, Northborough, ,MA, and President of Massachusetts American Choral Director’s Association. At Algonquin Dr. Eaton’s choruses have won numerous awards at festivals and competitions including gold medals for Jazz Choir, Camerata Choir, Chamber Choir, and Concert Choir.   Dr. Eaton’s students have been selected for National and Regional Honors Choirs and are always well represented in District and All State Choruses.  In 1994 he was awarded the Teacher of the Year Award at Algonquin for his work in developing humanities courses and a Senior Interdisciplinary Pilot Project. In addition Dr. Eaton has been an organist/choir director for most of his career, active in the American Choral Directors Association, the American Guild of Organists, Music Educators National Conference, and Central District Massachusetts Music Educators Association. He has served as adjudicator and manager of All-State and District choruses and clinician/adjudicator for Festivals of Music. He received a Master of Music Education degree from Hartt School of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Conducting also from Hartt. His DMA Dissertation was on Duruflé’s  Requiem.   Dr. Eaton has studied conducting with Allen Lannom, Dr. Gerald Mack, Dr. James Jordan, Kurt Klipstatter, Joseph Flummerfelt, and Sir David Willcocks.

President-Elect

Kayla Werlin is a native of Lexington, Massachusetts. She received her musical training at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts. A veteran of twenty years’ public school teaching experience, Kayla has taught vocal music at every level, from kindergarten through college. Kayla joined the music staff of the Longmeadow Public Schools in 1995, and spent her first years in Longmeadow building a large middle school choral program. She currently directs women's choirs and teaches Music Theory at Longmeadow High School.

Kayla is the founding director of the Springfield Children’s Chorus at the Community Music School of Springfield. This six year old program provides choral opportunities for a highly diverse population of children from kindergarten through high school in the greater Springfield area. She has just been appointed to direct Makhela, a community chorus in western Massachusetts focusing on the wide range of Jewish music.

Kayla's guest conducting experiences have included middle school and high school choruses in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Jersey. She has presented workshops and reading sessions on vocal music at state and division MENC and ACDA conferences. She teaches voice privately as well, and performs as a soloist in area concert halls. She is a member of 'Cantabile,' the Pioneer Valley's professional vocal chamber ensemble, and appears annually as a soloist with Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra.

Kayla lives, cooks, and gardens in Hadley, Massachusetts, with her husband E. Wayne Abercrombie.

Secretary

Bill Pappazisis

Treasurer

Faith Lueth has taught choral music for over thirty years. Her choral groups have been selected to perform for state, regional, and national conferences. She is an active clinician, conductor and adjudicator for ACDA, MENC, and MMEA and has given choral workshops throughout New England and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mrs. Lueth serves on the executive board of MMEA and the MMEA conference committee. She has been the Eastern Division Middle School R&S Chair for ACDA and is a past president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. Mrs. Lueth is the recipient of several awards, including the Lowell Mason Award from MMEA and the TEC Superintendent’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In addition to her teaching responsibilities at Needham High School, she teaches at Berklee College of Music and conducts the Gordon College Women’s Choir.

Newsletter

Rachel  Carroll is currently serving as the Choral Director for Wayland High School.  She has previously taught in private and public schools in North Attleboro and in Milton, and has served as Minister of Music at Trinitarian Congregational Church in Wayland.  Rachel holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting and a Master of Music Education and Vocal Performance from Boston Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Allen Lannom and Elisabeth Phinney.  She also holds a BA from Wheaton College.   She is a member of MENC and ACDA, and has taught private voice lessons for 10 years.  In March of 2003 her Madrigal Singers performed at the State Conference of MMEA.

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Jennifer Moss received her Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from UMass Amherst, where she studied voice with Jon Humphrey and Paulina Stark, and conducting with E. Wayne Abercrombie.  While at UMass, she interned with the Springfield Children's Chorus under the direction of Kayla Werlin.  Jennifer completed her Masters of Music degree in Choral Conducting at Temple University with Alan Harler, Director of Choral Activities, and Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia.  While in Pennsylvania, Jennifer served as Assistant Conductor for the Bucks County Choral Society for two years and taught general music and chorus in the Pennsbury School District.  Jennifer now serves as Director of Choral Activities at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School and Junior High School.

Middle School

Chet Laskosky a graduate of Berklee College of Music where he majored in music education and received a Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude. He has been the choral director at East Middle School in Braintree for the past thirteen years, where he conducts four choirs; grades 6 through 8. During his tenure at East Middle School he has directed and produced several musicals and student-faculty variety shows.  He has conducted the MMEA Central District Jr. High Chorus and has served as an adjudicator for SEMSBA. He has been a clinician at MMEA State Conferences, RIACDA Fall Conference and ACDA Summer Conferences and is currently the Middle School Repertoire and Standards Committee Chair for the Massachusetts  Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.  He lives in Framingham with his wife, Pam and his son Jake

High School

Joseph Stillitano serves as the choral director for grades 7-12 in the Westborough Public Schools.  He has degrees in Music Education and Vocal Performance from Ithaca College.  Prior to teaching in Westborough, he taught and conducted at West Genesee High School, in the Syracuse, New York area.  His vocal arrangements have been heard across New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts in High School, Collegiate, and Community Choirs.  He also is active in Central District MMEA.  He has also performed as a soloist for both the Masterworks Chorale and the Mystic Chorale, under the direction of Allen C. Lannom and Nick Page, respectively.

Music and Worship

Jim Hejduk (Hay-dock) holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Indiana University as well as post-grad stints as a Rockefeller Fellow at Oberlin, the Aspen Choral Institute and as a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University.  He has been Director of Music at Belmont Hill School since 1998.  From 1971-1986 he was Director of Choral Activities at Milton Academy and was Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1986-1998.  He has served twice as Organist-Choirmaster at The Congregational Church of Needham, first from 1974-1986 and from 1998 to the present.

Children’s Choirs

KC Conlan holds a BME from Boston Conservatory and an MM from the University of Massachusetts.  She is an elementary music specialist at The Common School (Amherst), conducts the Hampshire Choral Society Young People's Chorus, and has taught at UMass and in the Brookline, Amherst and Northampton public schools.  KC holds Orff certification.

College

Brad Wells is Choral Conductor at  Williams College.  He has extensive experience as a conductor, singer, and music educator. He has held conducting positions at Yale University, Trinity College (Hartford, CT) and University of California at Berkeley and, most recently, was Director of Choral Activities at California State University, Chico. As a singer he has performed and recorded with such ensembles as Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the California Choral Company. Wells has directed choirs of all ages and his ensembles have performed throughout the U.S., Mexico and Europe. Also an active composer and arranger, Wells holds degrees in music from Yale University, University of Texas at Austin, and Principia College.

Community Choir

Michelle Graveline is Associate Professor of Music at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, where she has taught and conducted the Assumption College Chorale for 18 years.  She is the Music Director of the Salisbury Singers of Worcester, which has more than doubled in size under her direction over the last 5 years.  She is also the Music Director of the Polymnia Choral Society in Melrose.

A graduate of Boston University and the University of Michigan, Dr. Graveline has conducted many choral works to critical acclaim, including Bach Mass in B Minor, Verdi Requiem, and Haydn Creation.  She has been an adjudicator for the Mass. Instrumental and Choral Conductors state festival and has guest-conducted massed choirs for the American Choral Directors Association, the American Guild of Organists, and for other Massachusetts festivals and concerts. She has led the Assumption Chorale on 8 national and international concert tours.  Her choirs have sung at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and have twice had the distinction of singing for Pope John Paul II.  She has worked with such distinguished conductors as Robert Page, Vance George, Dale Warland, and Margaret Hillis.

Jazz and Show Choir

Sandi Morgan

Women’s Choir

Catharine R. Melhorn

Men’s Choir

John F. Delorey received his BA in Music History from Vassar College, studied Conducting at Harvard University with Jameson Marvin, Composition at Berklee College of Music and received his Masters of Music in Choral Conducting from The Boston Conservatory, where he studied with William Cutter and Yoichi Udagawa.  He received his early choral training in the historic Choir of Men and Boys at All Saints Church, Worcester, Massachusetts. He was also a member of the nationally renowned Berkshire Boys Choir working with Sir George Guest, Allen Wicks and Alan Ridout, from which he was chosen to sing at the opening of the Kennedy Center in the premier of Leonard Bernstein's Mass. It was Bernstein who first put a baton in Delorey’s hand which sparked a lasting friendship. Delorey has sung and recorded with the Boston Camarata, Schola Cantorum of Boston and Schola Discantus of San Francisco, both as a tenor and countertenor. Delorey specializes in early music, and is currently researching materials for a new edition of Thomas Tallis's monumental motet "Spem in Alium." When not cavorting through the Renaissance, he is developing new methods toward the creation of a paperless choral environment. He is currently the Director of Choral Music and Assistant Instructor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Choral Director at The Boston Conservatory.

Ethnic and Multicultural

André de Quadros is Director, School of Music. Professor of Music and Chair, Department of Music Education. Artistic Director, Boston University Tanglewood Institute. His education includes:

BA, University of Bombay;

Diploma Humanities, La Trobe University;

Grad Diploma Movement and Dance, University of Melbourne;

Grad Diploma Music, Victorian College of the Arts;

Master of Education, La Trobe University;

Grad Cert of Higher Education, Monash University;

graduate studies at Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.

Violin studies with Adrian de Mello;

Conducting studies with Joachim Buehler and Robert Rosen.

DAAD scholarship 1979-1980 for study at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg.

His conducting engagements of note include Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Prokofiev Symphony Orchestra (Ukraine), National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Baden-Baden Orchester, Shiki Daikunokai Choir and Orchestra (Japan), Penang State Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Invited presentations include American Orff Schulwerk Association (Philadelphia), World Symposium of Choral Music (Vancouver), Deutscher Sängerbund (Würzburg), National Choral Seminar (Singapore). Former position Associate Professor and Director of Music Performance at Monash University School of Music - Conservatorium, Australia.

Awards include Monash University Vice-Chancellor and President's Special Commendation for Distinguished Teaching. Accredited Teacher, SEDA (UK). Artistic Director, Melbourne International Festival of Choirs. Editor, Music of Asia and the Pacific, Earthsongs, Oregon. Board member, International Federation for Choral Music, and Chair of its Multicultural and Ethnic Commission. Member, Editorial Committee, Music Education International (International Society for Music Education journal). Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Educational Inquiry. Member, Advisory Board, Boston University Center for Excellence in Teaching. Present position, 2001

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