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Our Artistic Director
 Kristina Boerger received her formative musical training from pianist Annie Sherter and holds the doctorate in choral conducting and literature from the University of Illinois. She tours and records regularly with the early music ensemble Pomerium and with The Western Wind a cappella sextet. A lecturer in music history at Barnard College
, she also teaches choral conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. Dr. Boerger is in her ninth season as Artistic Director of Manhattan's Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, with which group she has commissioned works from several New York composers. Having for two years directed New York's AMUSE
-- a chamber ensemble for women's voices -- she also worked as Associate Conductor to Robert Bass in preparing the Collegiate Chorale
for the North American premiere (2008) of Handel's newly reconstructed opera, Jupiter in Argos.In recent projects as a guest conductor, Boerger has appeared at the invitation of the Chicago Children's Choir, the Kalamazoo Bach Festival
, the University of Illinois Chamber Singers, the Schola Cantorum of Syracuse
, and the Christopher Caines Dance Company
. She has also served as a guest conductor, adjudicator, and clinician in several U.S. cities, in Quebec City, and in Mar del Plata, Argentina. As a singer in a variety of styles, she has performed with the Vox Vocal Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, The King's Noyse, the Tallis Scholars, and Urban Bush Women. She has also recorded for Early Music New York, Bobby McFerrin, Rocky Maffit, and Pan Morigan. In the 2006 season at the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Harvey Theater, she appeared in the critically acclaimed run of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a semi-staged production directed by Sir Jonathan Miller.Boerger's work as Founding Director (1990-1999) of AMASONG: Champaign-Urbana's Premier Lesbian/Feminist Chorus is the subject of Jay Rosenstein's acclaimed documentary, The Amasong Chorus: Singing Out, produced with grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Independent Television Service. The film has toured festivals worldwide and enjoyed repeated local PBS broadcasts since its national broadcast debut in June of 2003. With AMASONG, Boerger directed and produced two award-winning recordings (Over Here the Water is Sweet, 1998 GLAMA for Best Choral Performance; and AMAI, 2000 GLAMAs for Best Classical Composition and Best Choral Performance), performed at several national venues, and toured the Czech Republic.Dr. Boerger has been invited to speak on the topic of her dissertation, Whose Music Is it, Anyway? Black Vocal Ensemble Traditions and the Feminist Choral Movement: Performance Practice as Politics. This study explores racial and gender identity formation through choral performance and examines the effects of racism on White and Black performers' beliefs about authenticity, ownership, and theft of oral-tradition materials.Boerger has directed choirs in the public schools of Wisconsin and Illinois and served on the faculties of Lake Forest College and the Millikin University School of Music. She has also co-taught a summer graduate course at Columbia University, comparing oral and written musical and literary forms as consolidators of cultural identity. |
