Distinguished Leadership
updated 6/8/11

DIRECTOR'S BIOS

Martín Benvenuto, Artistic Director, Walnut Creek 3 & 4 and Honors Ensemble

Dr.
Martín Benvenuto has established himself as one of the leading choir conductors in the San Francisco Bay Area. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he has been Artistic Director for WomenSing (WS) since 2002. Active as a clinician, panelist, and guest conductor, Benvenuto is Artistic Director for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus (PWC), has served on the faculty of the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir for eight years, and has recently been appointed as Artistic Director for the Contra Costa Children’s Chorus.

 

Recognized for his exacting technique, compelling presence, and a passion for drawing the finest choral tone, Benvenuto’s repertoire is extensive, including great landmarks of the treble repertoire as well as works by living composers. His choirs are dedicated to commissioning new works from leading composers such as Libby Larsen, Chen Yi, Stacy Garrop, Charles Griffin, Cristián Grases, Brian Holmes, and David Conte.

 

His choirs have earned high marks in international competitions in Argentina, South Africa, Canada, Hungary, and Spain. Of particular note are the Third Prize awarded to the PWC at the 2006 Béla Bártok International Choir Competition, one of the most competitive and prestigious in the European circuit, and the 2010 Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker award, which recognized WS for programming recently- composed music that expanded the mission of the chorus and challenged the chorus’s audience in new ways. Benvenuto highly values artistic collaborations: his choirs have collaborated with Veljo Tormis, Joseph Jennings, Karmina Silec, Charles Bruffy, California Shakespeare Theater, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus.

 

Benvenuto has prepared choirs for organizations such as the San Francisco Opera, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Redwood Symphony, and the Kronos Quartet, and for works such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Monteverdi’s Vespers, Britten’s St. Nicholas, Mahler’s Third Symphony, Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s Mass, and Orff’s Carmina Burana.

 

An accomplished singer as well, Benvenuto has appeared as a tenor soloist in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Vivaldi’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Requiem, Bach’s Cantata BWV 61, Beethoven’s Mass in C, Ramirez’s Misa Criolla, and others.  As a member of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, he sang with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic under the batons of Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Helmuth Rilling, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Joseph Flummerfelt.

 

Benvenuto holds a D.M.A. in choral conducting from Boston University, where he studied with Ann Howard Jones and the late Robert Shaw. He earned his master’s degree from Westminster Choir College, majoring both in Choral Conducting and Voice Performance and Pedagogy, studying under Joseph Flummerfelt, Elem Eley and Julia Kemp. His undergraduate degrees in choral conducting and composition are from the Universidad Católica Argentina.

TBA, Artistic Director, Walnut Creek Levels 1 & 2, San Ramon Level 1 and Ensemble


2011-2012 Board of Directors

Emily Fernandez-Arnold
Linda Berti
Sandy Warner



Advisory Board

Karen Anderson
Theo Atkinson
Angene Feves
Dr. Dan Hoggatt
Iris Lamanna
Bob Keagy
Dr. Spencer Larsen
Sonja Nesbett Maund
Gwen Regalia
Deborah Roessler
Mary Stanley
Olivia Stapp
Jim & Chau Yoder

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