Our Artistic Director
Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt

 

Call for auditions:
We are looking for talented singers to join our ranks for next season. First round auditions will be held on Wednesday June 19th starting at 4:30 at UofT faculty of music. Please see our audition page here for more details of the audition process.

Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt is Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Toronto where she conducts the MacMillan Singers, the Women’s Chamber Choir, and teaches choral literature and conducting at the graduate and undergraduate levels.   Raised in Nova Scotia, she earned degrees from the University of Toronto, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has an ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

She has conducted choirs at conferences of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), as well as led festivals in Europe, and at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre in New York.   In 2009, she conducted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in a live broadcast of “Music and the Spoken Word,” and led a choral festival at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 2011.  She has conducted all-state choruses in more than thirty states, in addition to the 2011 Ontario Youth Choir.  In 2014 she will conduct the National Youth Choir of  Canada.

Hilary Apfelstadt has published numerous articles as well as chapters in two books, one about women choral conductors and the other about conducting women’s choirs.  She serves on the editorial boards of three professional journals and edits a choral column in the Canadian Music Educator.  While teaching in the U.S., she sang in the Robert Shaw Festival Singers and recorded two Grammy-winning CD’s with them in France.   She is passionate about choral chamber music, particularly of Canadian composers, and is thrilled to be appointed Artistic Director of Exultate Chamber Singers.

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