Second Boston Byzantine Music Festival

Principles of Conducting a Byzantine Choir

Date: Nov 15, 2014 Time: 1:15 PM–2:05 PM Location: Hellenic College Holy Cross Building: Archbishop Iakovos Library Reading Room Address: 50 Goddard Ave Brookline, MA 02445-7415

Cappella Romana ensemble member John Michael Boyer leads a master class on the skills and techniques of leading, directing, and conducting a choir singing traditional Byzantine Chant.

About the Speaker

John Michael Boyer, Cappella Romana

John Michael Boyer has been a professional singer and conductor for more than fifteen years. His early training in music was in Gregorian Chant and Renaissance polyphony in the renowned ensemble Cantores in Ecclesia. He began studies in Byzantine Music at age fourteen under musicologist Alexander Lingas and studied with the late Lycourgos Anglopoulos and Dr. Ioannis Arvanitis. For his degree in music from UC Berkeley, he studied orchestral, choral, and operatic conducting. As Protopsaltis (First Cantor) of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco and an expert Byzantine cantor, he lectures on liturgical music across the United States and abroad. He is a member of Cappella Romana, and he was artistic director of the Josquin Singers and associate conductor of Bay Area Classical Harmonies. Mr. Boyer coached Chanticleer for their Grammy award-winning recording of John Tavener's Lamentations and Praises. Mr. Boyer is an active composer, producing music for Cappella Romana's The Divine Liturgy in English and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology's All Creation Trembled. He is currently collaborating on a project for the St. John of Damascus Society with composers Matthew Arndt, Alexander Khalil, Kurt Sander, Richard Toensing, and Tikey Zes. John Michael Boyer recently graduated with his Master’s of Divinity as a seminarian at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.