Youth Chorale

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

Assistant Conductor

Andrew Milne

An avid conductor, singer, and music educator based in Massachusetts, Andrew Milne is thrilled to join the faculty of H+H. He serves as Director of Choirs and Theater at The Bromfield School in Harvard, MA, working with students in grades 6-12 in three curricular choirs, an extra curricular choir, classroom music courses, and theater. His students have been accepted to district, state, and national honor choirs as well as top college programs around the country. Andrew also serves as Music Director of the Westborough Community Chorus in Westborough, MA, working with 60 singers ages 18-85. In addition to his conducting, Andrew is a regular chorister and has sung with choirs such as the internationally acclaimed choirs of Joyful Noise in Torrington, CT with Dr. Gabriel Lofvall, and the Worcester Chorus under Dr. Chris Shepard. His conducting teachers have included Dr. Vernon Huff, Dr. Edward Bolkovac, and Dr. Julie Hagen. In 2014 Mr. Milne was honored as the recipient of the Evangelyna Etienne Scholarship Award given by H+H to a member of the HHYC community for commitment and passion for vocal music. Mr. Milne is passionate about community music making, sparking a joy and love of singing in his students, and helping singers understand and navigate the voice change. Andrew is an active member of NAfME, ACDA, and Pi Kappa Lambda. He holds a Bachelor's in Music Education from SUNY Fredonia and a Master's in Music Education: Choral Conducting from The Hartt School, University of Hartford.

amilne@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.