Artistic Director

Artistic Director Position Overview

The Vallejo Choral Society (VCS) seeks an Artistic Director to lead the organization and conduct the Symphonic and Chamber Choirs beginning with the 2023–2024 Concert Season. The Artistic Director plays the major role in ensuring that VCS meets its commitment to its core values of musical excellence, artistic integrity, passion, commitment, respect, and artistic opportunity, while providing the highest level of musical experience, learning, and enjoyment to VCS singers and listeners.

The Artistic Director and Conductor of the Symphonic and Chamber Choirs serves under contract with the VCS Board of Directors (the Board). In collaboration with the Board, Staff, and Committees, the Artistic Director provides the musical and artistic leadership of VCS by establishing standards of performance; proposing repertoire; and curating soloists, clinicians, instrumentalists, accompanists, and choral ensembles.

About the Organization

In good times, Vallejo Choral Society produces outstanding concerts and gives its singers enriching opportunities to perform choral masterpieces, and in tough times, VCS keeps its extended choral community united, inspired, singing, and learning through innovative programming.

During the height of the COVID Pandemic, VCS launched unique 12-week virtual programs that culminated in livestreamed concerts of Bach and Handel masterworks. In December 2021, the Choral Society made a triumphant return to live performances with concerts featuring Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, followed by a rousing season finale with Orff’s Carmina Burana, set poetically among rows of whisky barrels at a Mare Island distillery.

For its 105th season, Vallejo Choral Society presented December concerts featuring Eleanor Daley’s Requiem. In March 2023, VCS held a successful Spring Gala that included a set of Central and South American choral works, followed by a popular Spring Vocal Workshop with an esteemed guest choral clinician. To complete the season, the 50-member Choral Society produced two extraordinary performances of J.S. Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion with Baroque orchestra and renowned guest soloists, presented at St. Dominic’s in Benicia and the Empress Theatre in Vallejo.

The Ideal Candidate

VCS seeks a creative professional who understands and relates to the organization’s roots and unique history, is comfortable serving on a collaborative team with our Board and Staff, and builds upon strengths to lead the organization into its next phase of growth. The Artistic Director must communicate effectively, articulate a compelling vision for the organization, and translate that vision into original and innovative programs and larger organizational goals. The Artistic Director will drive musical and artistic decisions and performances, and collaborate with VCS Board and Staff to plan, market, and promote performances among our growing audience and wider arts community.

The Artistic Director must share the core values of VCS and bring a natural ability to explore and share the meaning of song texts and other compositional elements in ways that resonate with singers and audiences. The Artistic Director will recognize our singers’ desire to continue learning about the art and science of singing, vocal technique, intonation, tone production, and diction. The Artistic Director will prepare for weekly rehearsals and bring a positive, energetic, consistent, and collaborative spirit to rehearsals and concerts.

Specific Responsibilities

• Creates innovative choral programs in collaboration with the VCS Board and Staff. Proposes and submits a one- to two-year programming plan for the Symphonic Choir to the Board of Directors.
• Works collaboratively with and supports the Director of VCS’s Campanelli Youth Chorus.
• Supervises, programs, rehearses, and conducts the concerts of the Symphonic and Chamber Choirs (held locally), including youth chorus when it performs with the adult choir.
• Works closely with the Board and the staff on artistic and administrative matters related to concert production, including sourcing instrumentalists or soloists with Board approval.
• Recruits singers for the Symphonic Chorus and auditions singers for the chamber ensemble.
• Contributes to building concert attendance and revenue, and assists the Board and Staff in developing relationships with patrons to increase charitable donations.
• Supports and participates in fundraising and promotional endeavors.
• Serves as a non-voting contributor to the Board of Directors, advising on issues related to choral performance, preparation, and production.
• Enriches, coordinates, and promotes a strong, comprehensive music learning program for VCS members throughout the season.
• Promotes VCS in the Solano County community and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area through relationships with choral and music organizations, ensembles, musicians, conductors, composers, choral associations, and technicians.
• Participates in periodic review and personal evaluation as a constructive aspect of VCS leadership.

Expertise and Qualifications

• Excellent musicianship, aural acuity, thorough score preparation, and effective choral and orchestral conducting
• A solid understanding of vocal production, vocal pedagogy, and rehearsal techniques
• Wide knowledge of historical, contemporary, and global sacred and secular choral repertoire suitable for accomplished adult singers.
• Experience in developing full concert seasons of appealing programs around various themes within budgetary constraints
• Excellent relationship and communication skills to draw the best out of amateur singers, from novice to classically trained
• Ability to inspire through contagious enthusiasm
• Ability to work collaboratively with board members 
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in musical performance or conducting, or equivalent experience
• Advanced study in choral conducting
• 2+ years’ experience professionally directing a college, community, or church choral ensemble

Application Process

Applicants must submit a cover letter and résumé or curriculum vitae by June 23, 2023,

to [email protected]. Questions may be directed to the same address.

Upon invitation by the VCS Board, candidates may be asked to submit the following:

• Three references with full title, email address and phone number
• Sample video or digital sound recording from a recent rehearsal
• Sample video or digital sound recording from a recent performance
• Three or four recent concert programs
• Proposed programs for a concert season for the VCS Symphonic Chorus

Selected candidates will be invited to interview with the search committee in July, and final candidates will be invited to audition by leading a short rehearsal with the Symphonic Choir.

The selectee must provide proof of legal eligibility to work in the United States. The Vallejo Choral Society is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

For more information about Vallejo Choral Society, visit our webpage at www.vallejochoral.org or our Facebook page at Vallejo Choral Society, or email [email protected].