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Dr. Kristina Boerger
Director of DePauw University Choirs

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 has directed independent choirs in Urbana-Champaign and New York City, public school choirs in Wisconsin and Illinois, and college choirs at Lake Forest College and the Millikin University School of Music. After four years as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Carroll University and a year as Interim Director of Choral Activities at the University of Illinois School of Music, she is serving DePauw University's choral program during the sabbatical of Dr. Gregory Ristow. Each summer Boerger joins the faculty of the Madison Early Music Festival as a conductor, soprano, and course instructor.

 

She has appeared as guest conductor at the invitation of the New York Summer Music Festival, the Chicago Children's Choir, the Kalamazoo Bach Festival, the University of Illinois Chamber Singers, the Schola Cantorum of Syracuse, the Christopher Caines Dance Company, Alarm Will Sound, and Chanticleer. She has also served as guest conductor, adjudicator, and clinician at festivals and conferences in several U.S. cities, in Quebec City, and in Mar del Plata, Argentina.  Throughout the year, she concertizes as a soprano with the Manhattan-based Renaissance ensemble Pomerium, having also toured as a guest soprano with the Rose Ensemble of St. Paul. Boerger's self-published choral arrangements are performed widely, and her settings of poetry by Sarah White -- "Ballade with Christine de Pisan," "Song from Cymbeline," and "The Silver Buckle on Mozart's Shoe" -- are currently available at Boosey & Hawkes. 

Based in New York City from 2000 through the spring of 2009, Dr. Boerger divided her professional activities among her three principal loves: choral conducting, singing, and academic teaching. 

Dr. Boerger served nine seasons as Artistic Director of the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, one of New York's most highly regarded volunteer choirs. With this group she commissioned works by several New York composers, performed at the 2006 Eastern divisional convention of the American Choral Directors Association, collaborated with the Christopher Caines Dance Company, and recorded on John Zorn's new-music label Tzadik. Also in New York, she served during three seasons as Music Director of AMUSE and two seasons as Associate Conductor of the Collegiate Chorale. 

As a singer in a variety of styles, Boerger toured, recorded, and coached for nine years as a member of the Western Wind a cappella sextet, also concertizing regularly with the Renaissance choir Pomerium and with the Vox Vocal Ensemble, specialists in music of the 16th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Other recording credits include projects with Early Music New York, Bobby McFerrin, Rocky Maffit, and Pan Morigan. She has enjoyed guest appearances with The King's Noyse, the Tallis Scholars, and Urban Bush Women. In the 2006 and 2009 seasons at the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Harvey Theater, she appeared in the critically acclaimed runs of Sir Jonathan Miller's semi-staged production of J.S. Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.

Throughout her years in New York, Dr. Boerger lectured in music history at Barnard College, also serving as academic adviser to first-year and sophomore students and thesis mentor to seniors. From 2005 through 2009, she was the instructor of the undergraduate and graduate courses in choral conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. She also co-taught a summer graduate course at Columbia University comparing oral and written musical and literary forms as consolidators of cultural identity. 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 construction 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'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 2004. 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.

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