Concert Choir

Conductor

Michele Adams

Michele Adams is thrilled to join the Handel and Haydn Society Youth Choruses for the 2023-2024 season, conducting the Concert Choir and Youth Chorale. She is pleased to continue working with young artists, having previously served on the artistic teams of the Boston Children's Chorus and the Nebraska Children's Chorus. She is currently the Executive Director of the Performing Arts Center of MetroWest, where she oversees the organization's mission to create a welcoming community, providing education and performance and opportunities in music, theater, dance. She oversees all operational, development, and marketing efforts of the organization.

Adams served for ten seasons as the Director of Choirs for the award-winning Boston Children’s Chorus, where her ensembles were described as “splendid” (The Wall Street Journal) and “eloquent and perfectly-tuned” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). She conducted choirs of all levels and managed the innovative education program. Adams has also held artistic, teaching, and administrative positions in myriad public, private, and non-profit institutions, bringing arts programming to constituents of all ages. Adams is an active guest conductor, educator, and adjudicator. In recent years, she conducted honor choirs in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, prepared children’s choirs in opera premieres, and presented sessions for the American Choral Directors Association.

Adams studied choral conducting, music education, and voice at the University of South Carolina, Florida State University, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Her greatest musical passion is choral conducting, especially children’s choruses. She lives in MetroWest with her husband and two daughters.

madams@handelandhaydn.org

Associate Conductor

Becca Crivello

Becca Crivello is thrilled to be joining the H+H Youth Choruses faculty as the Associate Conductor of Youth Chorale and Concert Choir! She is currently the Choral Director at Hudson Memorial School, in Hudson, New Hampshire, where she works with students in grades 6, 7, and 8 curricular choirs, an extra-curricular audition-based choir, and an annual musical.

Crivello holds her B.M. in Music Studies (Education) with a minor in Italian Studies from UMass Lowell (summa cum laude) and her M.M in Music Education from Boston University. While at UMass Lowell, she was active in the a cappella community, having founded a female-identified a cappella group called The Hawkettes and being their Music Director all four years. Upon graduation from Boston University, she received a Departmental Award in Music Education from the BU College of Fine Arts.

Her ensemble ventures include University Singers and Chamber Singers at UMass Lowell, BU Singers, Symphonic Chorus, and Graduate Vocal Ensemble at Boston University, New Hampshire Master Chorale, The Common Voice at UMass Lowell, and the Sarteano Chamber Choral Conducting Workshop. Her conducting ventures include the role of Conducting Intern for Cappella Clausura and conducting in Choral Chameleon’s Conducting Institute.

Currently, she serves as the Secretary and Contemporary/Commercial Music R&R Chair for the NH ACDA chapter. She resides in southern New Hampshire with her husband.

bcrivello@handelandhaydn.org

Collaborative Pianist

Calvin Kotrba

Calvin Kotrba is a classical pianist dedicated to pursuing the true, the good, and the beautiful through music. Originally from Minnesota, he currently studies with Prof. Gila Goldstein at Longy School of Music, where he is the recipient of the Presidential Scholarship. He began Suzuki piano lessons at the age of three with his mother, Sara Kotrba, who nurtured in him a lifelong love of music. As a student of Dr. Ksenia Nosikova at the University of Iowa, he earned degrees in piano performance and mathematics with highest honors and honors in music.

As a soloist, Kotrba was the first-prize winner at the 2022-2023 University of Iowa Concerto Competition; in 2023 he studied at the Wiener MusikSeminar in Vienna, Austria and the Ian Hobson International Piano Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a collaborative artist, Kotrba has accompanied choirs and played piano, percussion, and viola in ensembles from marching band to orchestra. Currently, he is a Collaborative Piano Fellow at Longy, where he accompanies numerous vocalists and instrumentalists. He particularly loves chamber music, having performed with piano quintets, quartets, trios, and violin duos; he recently toured the state of Iowa with his piano quintet, performing the quintets of Dohnányi and Dvořák.

Kotrba is also an organist and a composer, as well as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society. His love of music is sustained and enriched by his Christian faith. When not playing the piano, he enjoys traveling long distances by train, eating steak, and organizing his schedule.