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William Jon Gray: WFIU's August Artist Of The Month

WFIU's Artist of the Month for August is conductor William Jon Gray.

William Jon Gray is an assistant professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he teaches graduate-level conducting, choral literature, and score study. This fall, he will assume the role of chair of the Choral Department.

Gray is the newly appointed director of Chicago's Music of the Baroque Chorus. Previously he served for three seasons as associate conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival in California where he prepared and performed major choral/orchestral works in collaboration with conductor Bruno Weil.

As artistic director of the Bach Chorale Singers in Lafayette, Indiana, Gray received high praise for his performances of such major works as Verdi's Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Handel's Solomon and Messiah, Haydn's The Creation, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Coronation Mass, Bach's St Matthew Passion, Brahms' Requiem, and Orff's Carmina Burana.

The Bach Chorale Singers' commercially released CD In Praise of the Organ: Latin Choral and Organ Music of Zoltán Kodály under Gray's direction received critical acclaim in the American Record Guide and the American Organist.

Gray studied at Indiana University, the Julliard School. the New England Conservatory, and Boston University, and has studied conducting with Robert Porco, Thomas Dunn, and Richard Pittman. He worked and performed frequently with Robert Shaw, and has appeared as a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in recordings and concerts in France, and in concerts at Carnegie Hall.

WFIU will feature music conducted by Gray throughout the month of August.

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