Choral Conductors

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 choral 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 theatre is of particular interest to Barry, and he has been active in this area for many years. In the 2019 he was music director for The Music Man with the Savoyard Light Opera Company in Carlisle, MA, and in Spring 2020 directed The Who’s Tommy at Arlington High School. Other past music 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 staff piano accompanist, on staff at the Concord-Carlisle and Arlington Public School systems, and for many years has been the summer musician at St. Peter's Church in Weston. 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 theatre 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. For many years he played and sang with the popular Boston-area dance band Firefly, and these days often sits in on saxophone with local favorites Becky and the Swinging Bards.

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. 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 piano and music theory lessons from his home studio in Arlington, MA, where he has lived since 1989.

SARAH ROBINSON SEEBER - Arlington-Belmont Chorale Assistant Conductor

Sarah Seeber is pleased to return to her role as Assistant Conductor of the Arlington-Belmont Chorale, a position she held from 2015 - 2017. Sarah was appointed Music Director of the Highland Glee Club of Newton in 2020, and is the first woman to hold the position in the 112-year history of the all-male ensemble.  In 2019, Sarah served as guest conductor of the New World Chorale, preparing them for performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana and Dvorak's Te Deum.  In 2008, Sarah co-founded Opera51 in Concord, where she sang and directed operettas. She currently serves as Chorus Master for the company.

A soprano in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Sarah performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
under the direction of Andris Nelsons, and with the Boston Pops under Keith Lockhart, at Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, and Carnegie Hall, and has served as French diction coach for the chorus. Equally at home in the world of pop music, she performed with dance band Firefly for twelve years as lead singer, keyboardist, and emcee. Sarah maintains a private voice studio in Newton Centre, where she teaches all genres of singing.