Conducting Staff

Here, you can learn more about our conducting staff, which is responsible for making artistic decisions for the choir and facilitating rehearsals. Presently, our conductor is none other than the fantastic Dr. Andrew Clark, and we are supported by our spectacular Associate Director of Choral Activities, Hana Cai. You can read their biographies below.

Andrew Clark

Conductor

Andrew Clark is the Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. He serves as the Music Director and Conductor of the Harvard–Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard Summer Chorus and teaches courses in conducting, choral literature, and music and disability studies in the Department of Music. Since arriving at Harvard in 2010, Dr. Clark has conducted the Harvard Glee Club in performances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and helped develop the Archibald T. Davison Fellowship Program, a community partnership with the Ashmont Boys Choir in Dorchester, MA. Under his direction, the Radcliffe Choral Society won the Grand Prize and two gold prizes at the International Competition for Chamber Choirs at Petrinja, Croatia in 2012. His performances with the Collegium Musicum of Handel’s Israel in Egypt and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers received critical acclaim, as did their recent debut with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performing Arvo Pärt’s St. John Passion and Tigran Mansurian’s Requiem in Jordan Hall. Clark has organized Harvard residencies with distinguished conductors, composers, and ensembles, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Harry Christophers, and Maria Guinand. He has commissioned numerous composers and conducted important contemporary and rarely heard pieces as well as regular performances of choral-orchestral masterworks.

His choirs have been hailed as “first-rate” (Boston Globe), “cohesive and exciting” (Opera News), and “beautifully blended” (Providence Journal), achieving performances of “passion, conviction, adrenalin, [and] coherence” (Worcester Telegram). He has collaborated with the National Symphony, the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Boston Pops, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Trinity Wall Street Choir, the Washington Chorus, Stephen Sondheim, and Dave Brubeck, among others.

Prior to his appointment at Harvard, Clark was Artistic Director of the Providence Singers and served as Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University for seven years. He previously held conducting posts with the Worcester Chorus, Opera Boston, and Clark University. Clark currently serves as a founding faculty member of the Notes from the Heart music program near Pittsburgh, a summer camp for children and young adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses. He earned degrees from Wake Forest, Carnegie Mellon, and Boston Universities, studying with Ann Howard Jones, David Hoose, and Robert Page. He lives in Medford, MA, with his wife Amy Peters Clark, and their daughters, Amelia Grace and Eliza Jane.

Hana Cai

Associate Director of Choral Activities

Known for her elegant conducting style and efficient and engaging approach to rehearsals, Dr. Hana J. Cai is a conductor, pianist, and singer based out of Bedford, MA. She is currently the Associate Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University, having previous served as the Associate Director for Lehigh Choral Arts at Lehigh University and as the Associate Director of Choral Activities at Ithaca College. 

Cai has enjoyed an eclectic career as a conductor, pianist, and singer. During her time in Rochester, she made her Canadian debut in January 2017 with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the Elora Singers as one of the five conductors selected to participate in the Choral Conductors’ Symposium. At Indiana University, she was one of three conductors selected to assist with preparing the chorus for a performance of the Penderecki St. Luke Passion where the composer was in attendance. She also served as the associate chorus master for the university premiere of Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and Wagner’s Parsifal for the Indiana University Bicentennial. In March 2019, Cai was the winner of the ACDA Graduate Student Conducting Competition in Kansas City, MO. She has presented her research on tokenism at the Indiana Choral Director’s Association and the ACDA Central and North Central Division Conference in Milwaukee, WI. Last fall, she was one of the invited presenters for the National Collegiate Choral Organization conference at Morehouse College and a finalist for the 2023 American Prize Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting.

Cai holds a BM in piano performance and a BA in Chinese from the University of Maryland, College Park, an MM in conducting from the Eastman School of Music, and a DM in choral conducting at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Her diction guide for Mandarin Chinese for singers and conductors is published in The Choral Scholar and American Choral Review.


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