Handel: Messiah
Betsy Burleigh, conductor
The Handel Project – Sponsored by The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc.
About the Conductor
Betsy Burleigh is associate professor of choral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
She comes to the Jacobs School from Boston, where she held the posts of music director of Chorus pro Musica and artistic director of the Providence Singers (Rhode Island). She also serves as music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, a position she maintains, where she prepares the chorus regularly for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She has led the Mendelssohn in its own concert productions, including performances of Brahms’ Requiem, Bach’s B Minor Mass, and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. In 2009, she took the Mendelssohn Chamber Singers, a select sub-chorus of 32, to sing an invited performance at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Burleigh served as assistant director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra from 1998 until 2009 and as chorus master for Cleveland Opera from 2002 to 2006. She also was director of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus for eight years.
As guest conductor, Burleigh has led the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Akron Symphony, the Canton Symphony, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Theater engagements have included music direction at Opera Cleveland and the Cleveland Public Theater. Also active as a clinician and festival conductor, she recently led Cincinnati’s October Festival Choir in Haydn’s Theresienmesse.
Burleigh’s conducting has been critically acclaimed; her 2012 Chorus pro Musica performance of Haydn’s Creation was praised in the Boston Globe as an “expansive, poetic reading,” and in the Boston Phoenix as “a stirring and elegant, lilting and expansive performance.” Her 2010 Chorus pro Musica rendition of Orff’s Carmina Burana was praised as being both “nuanced” and “hair-raising.” She won the 2000 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for best classical/opera performance and conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy Award-winning concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
She has prepared choruses for Manfred Honeck, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, Jan Pascal Tortelier, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Anton Coppola, Jane Glover, Jahja Ling, Nicholas McGegan, John Nelson, Yuri Temirkanov, and Franz Welser-Möst, among others.
From 1994 to 2010, she was coordinator of Choral and Vocal Music at Cleveland State University, where she achieved the rank of full professor.
Burleigh’s career began in Boston, where she was music director of The Master Singers, the Longy Chamber Singers, and the Cambridge Madrigal Singers, and held teaching positions at Tufts University, Clark University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She holds a doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University, a master’s degree in choral conducting from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a bachelor of music education degree from Indiana University. She is an enthusiastic grower (and consumer) of heirloom tomatoes.
The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc.
Handel Underwriting
Through the vision of Georgina’s mother, Louise Addicott-Joshi, The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., was established in 2007 as a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation to provide, among other things, educational and career development opportunities for young musicians and to encourage and support the public performance of music.
– let music flow and surround the world
let humanity be drown in beautiful music –
George Frideric Handel, a German-English baroque composer, was famous for his operas, oratorios, and concerti grossi. He was strongly influenced by the techniques of the great composers of the Italian Baroque period and English composer Henry Purcell. Handel’s music was well known to many composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His body of work includes 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios, and duets, numerous arias, chamber music, and 16 organ concerti. His most well-known works include Messiah, Giulio Cesare, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks.
Because of the variety of musical styles, vocal ranges, and musical instruments used in Handel’s works, it is important for students preparing for a career in opera performance to be well versed in, and comfortable with, singing his music. The Georgina Joshi Fund, administered by The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., and the Indiana University Foundation, was established to encourage and support the student performance of Handel’s operas and oratorios. It is the goal of The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., that Jacobs students be able to study and perform major works of Handel every year.
Through the generosity of the Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., the Jacobs School of Music has been able to produce three fully staged Handel operas—Giulio Cesare in 2009, Xerxes in 2013, and Alcina in 2015—as well as two oratorios—Judas Maccabaeus in 2011 and Esther in 2013. In each case, the foundation was instrumental in bringing to the Jacobs School renowned Welsh soprano and Handel expert Eiddwen Harrhy to conduct several days of coaching for the students preparing for these performances.
The IU Jacobs School of Music remains grateful to The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc. for its friendship and continued support.
Georgina Joshi
A native of Indiana, Georgina Joshi had received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied with Eiddwen Harrhy. Notably, Joshi had sung for the gala opera night at the Beaumaris Festival with the Welsh Chamber Orchestra conducted by Anthony Hose. She had also performed the role of the first Harlot in Handel’s Solomon conducted by William Jon Gray for the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Joshi was pursuing her Master of Music in Voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Alan Bennett. Her first role at IU was Clorinda in La Cenerentola.
Cost: Free
For more information contact:
Jacobs School of Music
(812) 855-9846
[email protected]