 | ||||
Professor of Music, Dartmouth College | ||||
 | | | | |
Biography | Conductor Melinda O'Neal has been praised for her “lucid and musical understanding of the score”, “moving and satisfying interpretations” and her “stylish and clear manner on the podium.” (Hugh Macdonald, Berlioz scholar and music critic.) She is newly appointed artistic director & conductor of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (MD), co-founder and conductor of Sonique, Boston Vocal Artists’ ten-voice professional chamber ensemble, and professor of music at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH). In 2004-5 under O’Neal’s leadership, the Handel Choir of Baltimore, a newly reconfigured community oratorio ensemble of forty-five voices with a seventy-year tradition of performing major works, presented baroque and classic style works of Handel, Bach, Mozart and Haydn with a newly assembled period instrument orchestra. A unique independent non-profit, the Handel Choir is dedicated to high quality performance of choral and choral-orchestral works and to reaching out to educate and inspire children in the Baltimore community. Of her first choral-orchestral performance with the Handel Choir of Baltimore, The Baltimore Sun music critic Tim Smith wrote (December 21, 2004): “With new guidance on the podium and the unmistakable sound of new potential in the air, the Handel Choir of Baltimore opened its 70th season over the weekend... Melinda O’Neal, in her debut as artistic director and conductor of the Handel Choir, drew appealing intimacy and clarity from these forces. .., This was historically informed, but never dry, music-making. O’Neal’s sensitive, assured approach yielded its own rewards and, above all, served notice that the Handel Choir is in very capable hands.” From 1979-2004 O’Neal was music director and conductor of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College, a student-community oratorio society performing choral and choral-orchestral works with guest vocal artists and professional Hanover Chamber Orchestra. Under O’Neal’s 25-year leadership, the Handel Society performed two-to-three major choral-orchestral works each year, including Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, John Adams’ Harmonium, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, Verdi’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, to name a few. The ensemble concertized in Austria and Germany, performed a portion of Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ in Carnegie Hall and toured to Toronto, Canada. Projects of special and recent interest include presentation of Berlioz’s rarely heard individual songs and choruses such as Vox Populi, and in partnership with the Dartmouth Medical School, the commission and première of The Staff of Aesculapius by Charles Dodge. O’Neal’s collaborative work has included conducting the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra and Handel Society in performances of Poulenc’s Gloria and Brahms’ Schicksalslied and preparing the singers for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. As guest conductor-in-residence for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra Chorale in 1995, O’Neal prepared Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust for Gerard Schwarz. While chorus master for the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, O’Neal prepared the singers for Berlioz’s Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Of the Verdi Requiem performance, Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote, “The chorus master Melinda O'Neal had trained them to sing everything musically ? there was none of the fancy murmuring and false theatrics that disfigure so many performances of this genuinely dramatic music. Everything they did was clean and honest." Of Monadnock Music’s performance of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, Richard Binder wrote, "The 12-member chorus, prepared by Melinda O'Neal, was divine. Singing stylishly and with a superb balance both internally and in relation to the [solo] singers, they were one of the evening's highlights." Dedicated to teaching and nurturing young singers, O’Neal conducted the all-undergraduate Dartmouth College Chamber Singers for seventeen years. This 32-voice ensemble presented an annual Feast of Song renaissance music-drama banquet and inaugurated a series of collaborations with the period instrument orchestra Arcadia Players (Amherst, MA), performing vocal-instrumental works by Purcell, Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Handel. Chamber Singers concertized on tour in England, Spain, Germany/Austria as well as the United States’ east coast and midwest. Chamber Singers regularly premièred works by Dartmouth faculty and students as part of the music department’s New Music Festival. In Hanover, O’Neal also founded and conducted the professional twelve-voice Groupe Vocale de St. Denis (Hanover, NH) which performed for evensong services and commissioned Musica Dei by Dartmouth music faculty member Charles Dodge. Throughout her conducting career, O’Neal has been an active, dedicated teacher. Since 1979 O’Neal has mentored countless Dartmouth College students, including students in London during the music department’s study term abroad, students enrolled in independent private conducting, and members of performing ensembles. Many alumni/ae continue a life-long involvement in music, and a significant number have pursued graduate music studies at institutions including Columbia University, Indiana University, Eastman School of Music, University of Illinois, University of North Texas, Peabody Institute, Florida State University and Boston University. While visiting professor and conductor at Indiana University (Fall semester, 1999), O’Neal conducted the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and taught and advised graduate conducting students. As a visiting professor at University of Georgia (Athens) for the 1996-7 academic year, O’Neal taught conducting at the doctoral, masters and undergraduate programs and she conducted the Concert Choir, University Chorus and Camerata. From 1987-90 O’Neal administered and taught in the Dartmouth Conducting Institute, a summer workshop for professional conductors which she founded; Thomas Dunn and Jan Harrington were colleague instructors. Since 2002, O’Neal has brought her versatility and knowledge of vocal repertoire to Boston Vocal Artists’ Sonique, a 10-voice professional ensemble performing solo and ensemble vocal chamber music composed from the 19th century to the present. Her work has been in collaboration with vocal coach and pianist Steven Morris. Recent concerts with Sonique included new compositions by Christian Wolff, Charles Dodge, John D. McDonald and Ileana Perez Velazquez, and a selection of music based on folksong and myth by Ravel, Britten and Brahms. Concerts in 2003 and 2004 focused on music by Hector Berlioz and 20th-century British and American music. O’Neal holds masters and doctoral degrees in choral-orchestral conducting from the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington and a bachelors in music education from Florida State University in Tallahassee. She studied score preparation, choral literature and conducting with Julius Herford, Jan Harrington, Fiora Contino, Helmuth Rilling, Robert Shaw, Marcel Couraud, John Nelson and Thomas Dunn. At Dartmouth O’Neal teaches courses in conducting, studies in music and text, and music theory. Her continuing research and performance interests include the relationship of text and music, historical performance practices, and the music of Hector Berlioz. O’Neal has given lectures and workshop demonstrations on Berlioz’s vocal music, and she is currently preparing a guide for performing this repertoire. Her articles on Mozart, Berlioz and performance practices may be located in the Choral Journal, Journal of the Conductors Guild, Podium Notes and Becoming the Complete Conductor (ECS Publishing). O’Neal is a past national board member of the Conductors Guild where she continues on the nominations committee. She serves on the research and publications committee of the American Choral Directors Association, and she is a charter member of the newly founded National Collegiate Choral Organization.
| |||
| | | | |