Yale Choral Artists                                                                (USA)

The Yale School of Music and the Yale Glee Club are pleased to announce the organization of a new professional choral ensemble, the Yale Choral Artists. The Yale Choral Artists will be a project-based ensemble comprised of leading professional singers from around the country and will be directed by School of Music faculty member Jeffrey Douma.

Robert Blocker, Dean of the School of Music, said that “the Yale Choral Artists will enhance and enrich the School’s commitment to the choral arts. Gifted singers from throughout the nation will not only bring a new artistic voice to our concert programs but also mentor Yale undergraduate and graduate students.”

The ensemble’s first two projects, both in 2012, include a February program with guest conductor and renowned early music specialist William Christie in New York (Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall), and a June program of contemporary American music at the Yale International Choral Festival. 

Jeffrey Douma is the Director of the Yale Glee Club, Yale’s principal undergraduate mixed chorus, and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Yale School of Music.

Douma has appeared as guest conductor with choruses and orchestras

on six continents, and has prepared choruses for performances under such eminent conductors as Valery Gergiev, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir David Willcocks, Krzysztof Penderecki, Nicholas McGegan, and Helmuth Rilling. He is also currently Musical Director of the Yale Alumni Chorus and Choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, where recent performances have included Finzi In Terra Pax, Duruflé Requiem and Bach St. John Passion with baroque orchestra Arcadia Players.

An advocate of new music, Douma has premiered new works with  the Glee Club by such composers as Dominick Argento, Ned Rorem, Jan Sandström, Lee Hoiby, and James MacMillan, has established two competitions for young composers, and is editor of the Yale Glee Club New Classics Choral Series, Boosey & Hawkes. 

A tenor, Douma has appeared as ensemble member and frequent tenor soloist with the nation’s leading professional choirs, including the Dale Warland Singers, Oregon Bach Festival Chorus under Helmuth Rilling, and Robert Shaw Festival Singers. A former conducting faculty member at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, he appears frequently as clinician and guest conductor for festivals and honor choirs. Douma served previously on the conducting faculties of Smith College and Carroll College. He holds the Bachelor of Music degree from Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the University of Michigan.