Betsy Burleigh, Music Director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh since 2006, was named Artistic Director of the Providence Singers (Rhode Island) in 2011 and has served as Music Director of Chorus pro Musica (Boston, MA) since 2009. 

 

She has led the Mendelssohn in their own concert productions (most recently Brahms’ Requiem,  Bach’s B Minor Mass, Rachmaninoff’s Vespers) in addition to preparing the choir to sing with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.  In 2009 she took the Mendelssohn Chamber Singers, a select sub-chorus of 32, to sing an invited performance at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

As guest conductor, Ms. Burleigh has led the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Akron Symphony, the Canton Symphony, and will appear with the Rhode Island Philharmonic in the 2011-12 season.  Theater engagements have included music direction at Opera Cleveland and the Cleveland Public Theater.   Also active as a clinician and festival conductor, she most recently led Cincinnati’s October Festival Choir in Haydn’s Theresienmesse.

Ms. Burleigh’s performances have been critically acclaimed;  her 2010 Chorus pro Musica rendition of Orff’s Carmina burana was praised as being both “nuanced” and “hair-raising”.  She won the 2000 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for best classical/opera performance and conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy award-winning concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

She has prepared choruses for Manfred Honeck, Rafael Frubeck de Burgos, Jan Pascal Tortelier, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Anton Coppola, Jane Glover, Jahja Ling, Nicholas McGegan, John Nelson, Yuri Temirkanov, and Franz Welser-Möst, among others.

Ms. Burleigh served as Assistant Director of Choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra from 1998 until 2009, and as Chorus Master for Cleveland Opera from 2002-2006.  From 1994-2010 she was Coordinator of Choral and Vocal Music at Cleveland State University, where she achieved the rank of Full Professor.  Her career began in Boston, where she was Music Director of The Master Singers, the Longy Chamber Singers, the Cambridge Madrigal Singers, and held teaching positions at Tufts University, Clark University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Burleigh earned a Doctor of Music degree at Indiana University, a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Indiana University.  She is an enthusiastic grower (and consumer) of heirloom tomatoes.