Paul Flight, conductor
Appearing: December 11-14, Celebrate the Holidays. Purchase tickets here.
Dr. Paul Flight, noted choral conductor and singer, brings a wealth of expertise to the direction of the Schola Cantorum San Francisco. A former member of such distinguished ensembles as The Waverly Consort, Pomerium Musices, and the New York Collegium, Flight is in his third season as Artistic Director of the California Bach Society, a well established Bay Area choir specializing in music of the Baroque and Renaissance periods, and is the founding Director of Chora Nova, an East Bay chorus rapidly gaining a reputation for interesting and innovative programming. He is in his ninth season as Principal Conductor of the Madison Early Music Festival (Wisconsin), where he has directed masterworks by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, Purcell, Dufay and Guerrero. Paul has twice been a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, directing the University's top choral ensembles. He conducted an operatic double-bill production of Gustav Holst’s Savitri and Darius Milhaud’s Les malheurs d’Orphée for Mills College and has conducted productions of Telemann's Der geduldige Socrates and Handel's Acis and Galatea for the San Francisco Early Music Society.
Paul received his doctorate from Indiana University, where he studied conducting with Robert Porco. His research focused on the Venetian composer Giovanni Croce (1557-1609) and he has recorded a program featuring the music of Croce for Harmonia, a nationally syndicated radio show. He recently appeared as a guest on KALW radio’s performing arts program, My Favorite Things, and has lectured on opera, music history and form as a Visiting Professor at Mills College.
An accomplished countertenor, Paul performs opera and oratorio internationally. He made his Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra debut under Esa-Pekka Salonen in December 2005 in John Adams' oratorio El Niño, and he has sung the work for the Norwegian State Opera (Oslo), the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and at the Ravinia Festival (Chicago). Flight's interpretations of 18th-century operatic and concert repertoire have also been critically acclaimed: he has sung the title role in Handel's Solomon, the role of Montezuma in Karl Heinrich Graun's Montezuma and Dardano in Handel's Amadigi di Gaula. He has performed the Stabat Mater of Vivaldi with the Sacramento Baroque Soloist, and as a soloist for American Bach Soloists and The San Francisco Bach Choir. A versatile singer, Paul performed with Sting in his "Songs from the Labyrinth" concerts at Los Angeles' Disney Hall in January 2007. He sings in many outstanding professional ensembles including Theatre of Voices, Aguavà New Music Studio, Piffaro, The Folger Consort, and The Concord Ensemble, an award-winning male sextet. Paul has recorded for the Dorian, Harmonia Mundi, and Glissando labels.
Read more about Paul Flight here. Join Dr. Flight, Schola Cantorum, the NCCO and soprano Melody Moore in December for a special holiday concert. Purchase your tickets here.