Master Chorale of South
Florida Appoints New Artistic Director/Conductor
Dr. Joshua Habermann has been
appointed Artistic Director of the Master Chorale of South Florida
beginning August 1, 2008. For the past 12 years, Dr. Habermann
has served as Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony
Chorus and Director of Choral Activities at San Francisco State
University. He was recently named director of Choral Studies
at the University of Miami.
“We are absolutely delighted”,
says Master Chorale president Mark W. Glickman. “Dr. Habermann
was the unanimous first choice of our chorus members.”
The search for a successor to Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe began shortly
after Dr. Scheibe announced he would be leaving Florida at the
end of the 2007-2008 school year to assume the position of Chair
of Choral and Sacred Music at the University of Southern California
(USC) Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles.
Thirty-three highly skilled applicants from
throughout the U.S. applied for the Master Chorale position
by submitting their curricula vitae and conducting DVDs. These
were reviewed by the Master Chorale search committee, which
pared the list to a group of semifinalists. All semifinalists
were interviewed in person or by telephone. Four candidates
were selected as finalists and invited to audition by conducting
rehearsals on April 21 and 28, 2008.
“With so many truly stellar applicants, it was a very
difficult task to narrow down the field. However, we chose the
four candidates we felt would be the best match for our group,”
says Nancy Gates-Lee, who chaired the search committee.
“Ultimately, all four finalists were rated highly by the
chorus members, but Dr. Joshua Habermann was the clear choice,
and he was eager to lead our group,” she says.
A professional tenor as well as conductor, Habermann performs
regularly with the Oregon Bach Festival (Eugene) and Conspirare
(Austin, Texas). He is fluent in German, French, Italian, Spanish,
Swedish and Portuguese, and is a seasoned coach of Latin, Russian
and Finnish.
In his position as Assistant Conductor of
the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, he has prepared the ensemble
for performances with world-class guest conductors in both standard
and contemporary choral/orchestral literature. Upon Vance George’s
retirement in 2006, he served as Interim Chorus Director, preparing
programs for Michael Tilson Thomas and Charles Dutoit.
His accomplishments as a teacher are equally
impressive. His San Francisco State University choirs were invited
to appear at the California Music Educator’s Association
Conference in 1999 (Sacramento) and 2001 (Pasadena), and have
undertaken tours to China (2000), Cuba (2002) and Germany and
the Czech Republic (2004). In 2003 The SFSU Chamber Choir was
a featured guest at the Waging Peace Choral Festival at the
University of Oregon, and in 2006 they collaborated with the
Orchestre des Jeunes de Provence in performances of Maurice
Duruflé’s Requiem throughout France. They were
recognized by the International Federation of Choral Music as
the only American choir to be invited to perform at the América
Cantat choral conference in Havana, Cuba, in April 2007. This
year, they performed at the American Choral Directors Association
convention in Anaheim, California.
Dr. Habermann is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown
University (1990), and obtained his graduate education in choral
conducting at the University of Texas at Austin, receiving an
MM in 1995 and DMA in 1997.
His concert debut as Artistic Director for
the Master Chorale of South Florida will take place November
14-16, 2008, in performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah
in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.
* * *
CONTACT:
Nancy Gates-Lee
Chair, Marketing Committee
Office: 954-659-6108
Cell: 206-849-1256
Florida MCSF office: 954-545-4059
njgates@att.net
