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The American choral conductor and music pedagogue, Andrew G. Clark, earned degrees from Studied at Wake Forest University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Boston University. His principal teachers include Ann Howard Jones, David Hoose, and the late Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page.
Andrew Clark held conducting posts with the Worcester Chorus (2006-June 2009), Opera Boston, Clark University, the Boston Pops Esplanade Chorus, and the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, the chorus of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was Artistic Director of the Providence Singers (July 2006-June 2011), and served as Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University for seven years.
Andrew Clark arrived at Harvard University in July 2010. He is the Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. He serves as the Music Director and Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, Harvard Summer Chorus, Cambridge Common Voices, and teaches courses in conducting, choral literature, and music and disability studies in the Department of Music. His work with the Harvard Choral Program empowers individuals and communities through active engagement with choral music: fostering compassion, community-building, and joy. As an artist-educator devoted to advancing equity, justice, and access to the arts, he has developed community partnerships with youth music education programs, correctional institutions, health care facilities, overnight shelters, senior-care communities, and other service organizations operating beyond the normalized conventions of arts practice. He has developed several Harvard residencies with with distinguished conductors, composers, and ensembles, including Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Lorelei and Antioch ensembles, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Maria Guinand, Harry Christophers, Craig Hella Johnson, and Masaaki Suzuki, among others.
Since arriving at Harvard, Andrew Clark has led the Harvard Choruses in performances at the Kennedy Center, Boston Symphony Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and venues across the USA, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. He also helped develop the Archibald T. Davison Fellowship Program, a community partnership with the Ashmont Boys Choir in Dorchester. His choral-orchestral performances with the Harvard Choruses have received critical acclaim, ranging from the Baroque era to seminal 20th- and 21st-century works. Under his direction, the Radcliffe Choral Society won the Grand Prize and two gold prizes at the International Competition for Chamber Choirs at Petrinja, Croatia in 2012. His performances with the Collegium Musicum of George Frideric Handel’s Israel in Egypt and Sergei Rachmaninov's Vespers received critical acclaim, as did their 2012 debut with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performing Arvo Pärt’s St. John Passion in Jordan Hall.
His choirs have been hailed as “first rate” (Boston Globe), “cohesive and exciting” (Opera News), and “beautifully blended” (Providence Journal), achieving performances of “passion, conviction, adrenalin, [and] coherence” (Worcester Telegram). He has collaborated with the National Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and New Haven Symphony, Boston Pops Orchestra, Handel and Haydn Society, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Boston Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Trinity Wall Street Choir, Washington Chorus, Stephen Sondheim, Ben Folds, and the late Dave Brubeck, among others.
Andrew Clark has commissioned and premiered over fifty compositions and recently launched the Harvard Choruses New Music Initiative, supporting the creative work of undergraduate composers. He has commissioned numerous composers and conducted important contemporary and rarely heard pieces as well as regular performances of choral-orchestral masterworks. In 2011, he conducted the Boston premiere of John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize–winning On the Transmigration of Souls with the composer present. His first studio recording with the Holden Choruses, featuring the choral music of Ross Lee Finney, was released in 2013.
Andrew Clark continues his work as a founding faculty member of the Notes from the Heart music program near Pittsburgh, a summer camp for children and young adults experiencing disabilities and chronic illness. He is Interim Director of Vocal Ensembles 2022-2023 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He lives in Medford, MA, with his wife Amy Peters Clark, and their daughters, Amelia Grace and Eliza Jane. |
