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The American choral conductor and music pedagogue, William Cutter, obtained his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Composition from Boston University School for the Arts. His primary composition teachers included Pulitzer Prize-winning composers David Del Tredici and Bernard Rands.
William Cutter has held academic posts at Boston University's School for the Arts, the University of Lowell, and the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and served for five seasons as music director and conductor of the Brookline Chorus, an auditioned eighty-voice community chorus.
Currently, William Cutter is Lecturer in Music and Director of Choral Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is conductor of the MIT Concert Choir and MIT Chamber Chorus. A member of the conducting faculty at the Boston Conservatory since 1999, he is Director of Choral Studies, conducts the Boston Conservatory Chorale and Women's Chorus and teaches graduate conducting. He currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Boston Conservatory Summer Vocal/Choral Intensive (VCI) Program for high school singers. He also serves as Chorus Master and Associate Conductor of the Boston Lyric Opera Company (BLO) for seven seasons (2002-2007). For four summers he was conductor of the Boston University Young Artists Chorus of the Tanglewood Institute, and was music director and conductor of the Opera Laboratory Theater Company, as well as founder and music director of the vocal chamber ensemble CANTO, which specialized in contemporary choral music. In 2002, he was asked to serve as a choral consultant for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO’s) educational outreach program.
As assistant to John Oliver for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, William Cutter has prepared choruses recording sessions and TV tapings for John Williams and Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Orchestra. In May 1999, he prepared the chorus for two television tapings and the CD "A Splash of Pops" which featured the premiere of With Voices Raised by Stephen Flaherty, composer of the Broadway musical Ragtime. In August 2002, Cutter prepared the Chorus for its performance of L.v. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Sir Roger Norrington. He has also served on the faculty of the North Carolina Summer Institute of Choral Art and is in demand as a guest conductor and adjudicator throughout the USA and Canada. In 2007, he was guest conductor of the NEC Chamber Singers and the Chorus pro Musica of Boston. During the summer of 2009, Cutter was chorus master for Red Sox Album CD, recorded by the Boston Pops Orchestra. He also prepared backup singers for a concert with James Taylor at Tanglewood in August 2009. In August 2010, he prepared the Montreal Symphony Chorus for a performance of Haydn's Creation for Maestro Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Later that same month, he prepared the women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets for Maestro David Zinman at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In April of 2011, the MIT Chamber Chorus performed the Kronos String Quartet as well as the Bang on a Can All-Stars in a new version of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. Cutter is currently guest conductor of the Boston Choral Ensemble, preparing a program entitled Bang - Music for Percussion and Chorus, featuring works by Dominick Argento, Leonard Bernstein, Peter Klatzow and Timothy Takach.
William Cutter maintains an active career as a composer with recent performances by the Illinois State University School of Music Orchestra, Cantata Singers, PALS Children’s Chorus, Monmouth Civic Chorus, the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the New World Chorale in Boston, Melodious Accord of New York City and Opera Omaha. His music is published by E.C. Schirmer, Boston; Lawson and Gould, New York; Alfred Educational Publishers, Los Angeles; Roger Dean Publishers, Wisconsin; Shawnee Press, Pennsylvania; and Warner/Chappell of Ontario, Canada.
As a professional tenor, William Cutter has sung with the premiere vocal ensembles in Boston, including the Handel and Haydn Society, Cantata Singers, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, and the Harvard Glee Club. He has been a featured soloist on the Cantata Singers' Recital Series and has been a recitalist on the MIT faculty performance series singing the music of Benjamin Britten, Schubert, and Charles Ives. He has taught voice at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. |
