William Jon Gray

Music of the Baroque’s chorus director since 2010, William Jon Gray is the newly appointed director of choral studies at the University of Albany-SUNY. He previously served as the chair of the choral department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has been associate conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival in California, leading major choral and orchestral works and preparing performances with internationally renowned conductor Bruno Weil. He has also been assistant conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society.

William Jon Gray has made guest appearances with orchestras and at festivals around the United States, including the Handel and Haydn Society, Princeton Festival, National Chamber Orchestra, Billings Symphony, and the Lafayette Symphony. In August 2010, he prepared the Grant Park Festival Chorus for performances of Dvorák’s Requiem in collaboration with Carlos Kalmar. He has prepared choruses for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the National Chamber Orchestra, and he currently serves as faculty director of opera choruses for the Indiana University Opera Theatre, collaborating with such notable directors as Tito Capobianco (La traviata), Colin Graham (Peter Grimes), Vincent Liotta (A View from the Bridge), and Tomer Zvulun (Faust).

William Jon Gray served as artistic director of the Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra of Washington, DC from 1986 to 1993, and was artistic director of the Bach Chorale Singers from 1994 to 2010, conducting more than 100 performances of major choral works. With the Bach Chorale Singers, he received national critical acclaim for the commercially released recording In Praise of the Organ: Latin Choral and Organ Music of Zoltán Kodály.

William Jon Gray studied at Indiana University, the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and Boston University. He performed frequently with Robert Shaw as a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, both in recordings and in concerts in France and at Carnegie Hall.