Barlow Bradford Appointed Utah Symphony Chorus Director
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Utah Symphony | Utah Opera named Barlow Bradford as the new Utah Symphony chorus director this October. Bradford has served as the Director of Choral Studies at University of Utah since 2012.
“Barlow Bradford has already greatly influenced the choral community in Salt Lake City and we are thrilled he will be preparing the Utah Symphony Chorus to collaborate with our world-class Utah Symphony musicians,” said President and CEO Melia Tourangeau.
This appointment will create new opportunities for University choral conducting students and singers. “Our choral students will get to sing major works with the Utah symphony in Abravanel Hall,” Bradford explains. “This will give us opportunity to do large scale works that we couldn’t put on here.
University choral conducting students will also benefit. “The Symphony is very excited about having doctoral students working with the choir,” Bradford says.
This November, Bradford will prepare the Symphony Chorus for Handel’s Messiah, and in February the chorus will tackle Mozart’s Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis under the baton of maestro Thierry Fischer. Bradford looks forward to working with Fischer. “He is a first rate musician and human being,” Bradford says. “He knows about music and how to work with people.”
Bradford will continue to develop the University choral program in conjunction with his work with the Symphony chorus. Since starting at the U, Bradford has created the University of Utah Chamber Choir, a small group that performs some of the most advanced choral music in the world. He has shaped the A Cappella choir into a masterworks ensemble, performing large-scale works. Both choirs are open to music majors and non-majors.
“We are always working for higher quality in performance for both conducting students and choral singers,” says Bradford. “We want a choral program where people learn the fine art of conducting in addition to the fine art of choral singing.”