THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR - CONSTANCE CHASE

Newly appointed Director of the Connecticut Chamber Choir, Constance Chase leads an active professional life in Connecticut and New York as a performer, voice teacher, conductor and author. Celebrating her tenth season as director of the Cadet Glee Club of the United States Military Academy at West Point , Ms. Chase has overseen its growth from thirty to eighty members and reinvigorated the choir’s national reputation. Under her direction the Glee Club has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, completed concert tours of the East and West Coasts, performed at Ground Zero on the first anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy, appeared with the Boston Pops, the U.S. Army Band, and the Syracuse and Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestras, given scores of concerts annually throughout the United States and produced multiple new recordings: the CD Live at Notre Dame (2008), the DVD/CD Stand Ye Steady (2005) with guest artists Lea Salonga and Daniel Rodriguez; the CD Voice of the Corps (2003), the choir’s first full-length release since 1966; and the original hymn Mansions of the Lord for the closing credits of the Paramount feature film We Were Soldiers (2002). Most recently the Glee Club recorded for country artist Trace Adkins’ forthcoming CD, due for a June 2008 release, and recorded a forthcoming PBS special with pianist Marina Arsenijivic and the US Military Academy Band. The Glee Club is also in frequent demand for nationally televised appearances by invitation of Lifetime Network, Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden , the Fiesta Bowl, the BCS National Championship, the Breeders Cup and Super Bowl XXXIX.  

She is an adjunct professor of voice at Western Connecticut State University ’s School of Visual and Performing Arts, teaching Applied Voice and Voice Workshop. Her private voice students are state and national award winners of NATS, MTNA and NFAA competitions and continue their studies at the nation’s finest conservatories and schools of music, including Oberlin, Eastman and Indiana University . She is co-author with Shirlee Emmons of Prescriptions for Choral Excellence, Oxford University Press (2006). The book for choral directors and singers applies new principles of voice science, leadership and performance psychology to the choral setting. A lyric soprano and accomplished soloist in recital and chamber works, Ms. Chase has also performed and served as rehearsal assistant with The Riverside Choral Society in New York City, Patrick Gardner, Director, most notably in its critically acclaimed Mostly Mozart Festival appearances under the direction of Louis Langree, Nicholas McGegan and Gerard Schwarz.  Ms. Chase was founding and Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Chorale in its 2007-08 inaugural season.  

Additional expertise derives from more than twenty years of practical and professional experience in leadership issues, functioning as the wife of an Army colonel while living around the world, and eleven years of elite performance/performance enhancement study with eminent performance psychologist Alma Thomas. A dynamic presence in the studio and in performance, Ms. Chase’s early training and extensive professional experience as a flutist, pianist, and instrumental and choral director made possible a wealth of musical experience during the years of frequent military moves.  

Ms. Chase holds the B.M., magna cum laude, from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro , the M.A. in Voice Performance from Hunter College , City University of New York, where she studied with Shirlee Emmons, and Zertifikat in German language studies from Goethe Institute, Schwäbisch Hall , Germany . She was named to Pi Kappa Lambda as an undergraduate music student and won the Agnes M. Duffy Prize at Hunter College . She is a member of ACDA (American Choral Directors Association), and NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing), and currently serves as Secretary of the NATS Connecticut chapter.