BARRY SINGER - Arlington-Belmont Chorale and Chamber Chorus Music Director
Barry Singer, Choral Music Director for the Philharmonic Society of Arlington, has directed the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus since 1994, and the Arlington-Belmont Chorale since 2004.
In addition to his work with the Philharmonic Society of Arlington, Barry was Chorus Master for Concord's Opera51 and choral conductor for the Appalachian Mountain Club Mountains and Music program. He has served as interim choir director of the First Parish Church in Needham, Congregation Shalom in Chelmsford, and the Winchester Unitarian Society, and has been a guest conductor for the Carlisle Chamber Orchestra, Paul Madore Chorale Summer Sing Series, and the M.I.T Gilbert and Sullivan Players. Musical theater is of particular interest to Barry, and he has been active in this area for many years. Since 2019 he has been music director for the Savoyard Light Opera Company in Carlisle, MA, and has acted as assistant music director for Arlington High School theatre productions since 2016. Other past directorships include the Arlington Friends of the Drama, the Sudbury Savoyards, and Oktoberfest Music Theatre. In addition, he was a founder, arranger, singer, and co-leader of Serious Fun, an award-winning contemporary a cappella group.
A multi-instrumentalist and vocalist since childhood, Barry maintains a very active musical performing career aside from his conducting duties. On the instrumental side, Barry received flute and piano lessons from an early age, and added saxophone, clarinet, and electric bass while in his teens. Currently, Barry is a busy piano accompanist, on staff at the Concord-Carlisle and Arlington Public School systems. Other current performing activities include frequent work on keyboards and woodwinds in the recording studio for local songwriters, and in the orchestra pit of several area theater groups. He is a freelance jazz pianist, and also works regularly as a piccoloist and sax player with the professional parade band The Boston Windjammers. Barry frequently appears with local bands Becky and the Swinging Bards, and the Compaq Big Band, and for many years he played and sang with the popular Boston-area dance band Firefly.
Barry first began singing in high school, and studied voice while at Berklee College of Music. From 1983-1998 he sang with the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood Festival Chorus in numerous performances and recordings with the BSO and Boston Pops Orchestra, and still occasionally appears with area choruses including the New World Chorale and the Highland Glee Club. Barry served for many years as baritone soloist with the Congregation Shirat Hayam of the North Shore and St. Peter's Church in Weston.
Barry received his degree in Music Composition from Berklee College, where he studied composition with John Bavicchi and Jeronimas Kačinskas, and conducting with George Monseur. The PSA has premiered four of his choral compositions: Three Times We Parted (1992), For I Know Well the Spring (2006), and Missa brevis naturalis (2019), written for the Chamber Chorus, and Lux Aeterna (2002) for the Chorale and Orchestra. He has arranged and orchestrated popular music for a number of performers, and composed original music for the off-Broadway play Looking for Billy Haines, which ran in New York in 2010.
Barry recently retired from the Music Maker School in Acton where he taught piano and flute from 2002-2019, but continues to provide audition coaching as well as music theory coaching at his home studio in Arlington.