Betsy Burleigh is celebrating her fifth season as Music Director of the 102-year-old Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, which includes principal responsibility for leading the Mendelssohn in their own concert productions as well as preparing the choir to sing with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Most recently she conducted the group in a much-heralded Bach Mass in B Minor to a sold out audience. She has also conducted the Mendelssohn Choir in a critically acclaimed performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, and took the Mendelssohn Chamber Singers, a select sub-group of 32, to sing on the Library of Congress concert series in Washington D.C.
Ms. Burleigh is in her second year as Music Director of Boston’s Chorus pro Musica. Her 2009-10 season finale performance of Orff’s Carmina burana was critically praised as being both “nuanced” and “hair-raising.” Ms. Burleigh served as Assistant Director of Choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra from 1998 until 2009, and was the Chorus Master for Cleveland Opera from 2002-2006. From 1994-2010 she was Coordinator of Choral and Vocal Music at Cleveland State University, where she achieved the rank of Full Professor.
Ms. Burleigh is an active guest conductor, and has led the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Akron Symphony, and the Canton Symphony in both choral and orchestral repertoire. Musical theater engagements have included the music direction of Viktor Ullman’s opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis with Cleveland Public Theater, which received the 2000 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for best classical/opera performance. She also led critically acclaimed Opera Cleveland performances of A Little Night Music. Further credits include conducting the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy award-winning benefit concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Active as a conductor of choral festivals and workshops, she most recently led Cincinnati’s October Festival Choir in Haydn’s Theresienmesse.
Ms. Burleigh has prepared choruses for Manfred Honeck, Rafael Frubeck 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.
Her career began in Boston, where she was Music Director of The Master Singers, the Longy Chamber Singers, the Cambridge Madrigal Singers, and held teaching positions at Tufts University, Clark University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ms. Burleigh holds a Doctorate of Music from Indiana University, a Master of Music in choral conducting from The New England Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music Education from Indiana University.