About the Director

photo by Karlene Rosera, The Tech

Dr. William Cutter is Lecturer in Music and Director of Choral Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is conductor of the MIT Concert Choir and Chamber Chorus. A member of the conducting faculty at the Boston Conservatory since 1999, he conducts the Boston Conservatory Chorale and Women's Chorus and teaches graduate conducting. He has also held academic posts at Boston University's School for the Arts, the University of Lowell, and the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and served for five seasons as music director and conductor of the Brookline Chorus, an auditioned eighty-voice community chorus. Dr. Cutter currently serves as artistic director for the Boston Conservatory Summer Choral Insitute for high school vocalists, and previously served as Chorus Master and Associate Conductor of the Boston Lyric Opera Company. For four summers he was conductor of the Boston University Young Artists Chorus of the Tanglewood Institute, and was music director and conductor of the Opera Laboratory Theater Company, as well as founder and music director of the vocal chamber ensemble CANTO, which specialized in contemporary choral music.

As assistant to John Oliver for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, he has prepared choruses for John Williams and Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. In May 1999, he prepared the chorus for two television tapings and the CD "A Splash of Pops" which featured the premiere of With Voices Raised by Stephen Flaherty, composer of the Broadway musical Ragtime. In August 2002, Dr. Cutter prepared the Chorus for its performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Sir Roger Norrington. He has also served on the faculty of the North Carolina Summer Institute of Choral Art and is in demand as a guest conductor and adjudicator throughout the United States and Canada.

With degrees in composition, Dr. Cutter maintains an active career as a composer with recent performances by the Monmouth Civic Chorus, the New Jersey Gay Men's Chorus, the Boston Pops, the New World Chorale in Boston, Melodious Accord of New York City, and Opera Omaha. His music is published by E.C. Schirmer, Boston; Lawson and Gould, New York; Alfred Educational Publishers, Los Angeles; Roger Dean Publishers, Wisconsin; Shawnee Press, Pennsylvania; and Warner/Chappell of Ontario, Canada.

As a professional tenor, he has sung with the premiere vocal ensembles in Boston, including the Handel and Haydn Society, Cantata Singers, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, and the Harvard Glee Club. He has been a featured soloist on the Cantata Singers' Recital Series and has been a recitalist on the MIT faculty performance series singing the music of Britten, Schubert, and Ives. He has taught voice at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School.

. . . and our assistant director

Karen Harvey is well-known to New England audiences as a solo artist and collaborative performer. Currently an Affiliate Artist at MIT, she formerly served on the musical staffs of Boston University and the New England Conservatory of Music, and has taught on the faculties of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, the North Shore Conservatory, and Endicott College. A two-time recipient of Tanglewood Music Center Fellowships, Ms. Harvey has been a featured soloist with the Lowell, Salem, and Merrimack Valley Philharmonic Orchestras, among others. For her solo recital of twentieth-century piano music at the Wang Center, she was hailed as a "pianist with an infinite supply of fingers" (Joseph Fiske, Boston Herald). In addition to her keyboard activities, Ms. Harvey is Music Director of the SRO Players in Lowell and the Holiday Classics at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and currently serves as Director of Music Ministry at the United Church of Christ in Norwell.