In this episode, I sit down with noted conductor and composer, Bradley Ellingboe to discuss what attributes make a great conductor.
A Practical Guide to Choral Conducting published by Kjos Music
Bradley Ellingboe has led a wide-ranging career in the world of singing, including accomplishments as a choral conductor, soloist, composer, scholar and teacher. As a choral conductor he has led festival choruses in 35 states and 14 foreign countries. He made his operatic conducting debut in December, 2011, leading the world-premiere of Stephen Paulus’s opera Shoes for the Santo Niño in a joint production by the Santa Fe Opera and the University of New Mexico. As a bass-baritone soloist he has sung under such conductors as Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling, and Sir David Willcocks. Ellingboe has over 140 pieces of music in print, including the Requiem for chorus and orchestra, which has been performed more than 300 times in this country and Europe, and his newest work, Star Song, which had its New York debut (Lincoln Center) in May of 2014, and its European debut in July of that year. For his scholarly work in making the songs of Edvard Grieg more accessible to the English-speaking public, he was knighted by the King of Norway in 1994. As a teacher, the University of New Mexico Alumni Association named him Faculty of the Year in 2008.
Bradley Ellingboe retired in 2015 after serving on the faculty of the University of New Mexico for 30 years, where he was Director of Choral Activities, Professor of Music and Regents Lecturer. During his three decades at UNM he also served at various times as Chairman of the Department of Music and Coordinator of Vocal Studies. He is a graduate of Saint Olaf College and the Eastman School of Music and has done further study at the Aspen Music Festival, the Bach Aria Festival, the University of Oslo and the Vatican.
Ellingboe has won annual awards for his choral compositions from ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Arrangers and Publishers since 2000. His choral music is widely sung and is published by Oxford, G Schirmer, Augsburg, Walton, GIA, Hal Leonard, Mark Foster, Choristers Guild, Alliance, Concordia, Selah, and particularly the Neil A. Kjos Music Company, for whom he edits two series of choral octavos. In 2017 he became Acquisitions Editor for National Music Publishing.
Find the show on your favorite Podcast Platform!