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Richard Coffey, Music Director of the Hartford Chorale, is one of New England's principal choral conductors. He served as the Hartford Chorale's interim music director
in the 2005-2006 season, which led to his appointment as the permanent music director
in June of 2006. In 1974, Coffey founded and is still Music Director of CONCORA
(Connecticut Choral Artists), a fully professional vocal ensemble. Mr. Coffey is organist
and Minister of Music of the South Church in New Britain, where he conducts a choir of
professional and amateur singers and serves as artistic director of its Music Series, which
annually presents concerts by visiting artists.
In frequent demand as a chorus master, Coffey has prepared choruses for many
orchestras and festivals including the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra New
England, the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, the New Britain Symphony Orchestra,
the Waterbury Symphony, the Bard Music Festival, and the Harkness Summer Music
Festival. For five seasons, starting in 1988, Coffey was chorus master for the Connecticut
Opera Association.
For three years, Mr. Coffey was Visiting Artist in Choral Music at the Hartt School,
University of Hartford, where he conducted the Hartt Chamber Singers and taught
graduate seminars in choral literature. He has served on the faculties of SummerTerm
at Central Connecticut State University, the President's College of the University of
Hartford, the Colby Church Music Institute in Waterville, Maine, and the University of
Connecticut at Storrs.
Mr. Coffey has served on the boards of directors of the New Britain Symphony
Orchestra; the Hartford Chapter, American Guild of Organists; and Chorus America; the
Washington, D.C.-based national choral service organization. He also serves regionally
as adjudicator and clinician for keyboard and choral competitions and festivals. From
1980 through 1985 he served on a panel of advisors to the Institute of Sacred Music at
Yale University. Coffey often makes presentations at regional and national conventions
of the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, and the American Guild
of Organists, and frequently writes reviews for the Choral Journal.
With colleague Larry Allen, Mr. Coffey has written a collection of essays, A Call
to Excellence: Sacred Music in America, published in serial form by various chapters
of the American Guild of Organists. The result of some 40,000 miles of travel visiting
churches, chapels, colleges, and seminaries throughout the United States, the document
is an examination of trends in sacred music during the late 1980s. Mr. Coffey also wrote,
in 2008, A Service of Song, a history of the music and musicians of South Church, New
Britain.
Coffey holds degrees in music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
and the School of Sacred Music of New York's Union Theological Seminary. He was
awarded France's "premier prix" in organ performance following studies with organist
Marie-Claire Alain in 1979. In 1992 Mr. Coffey was named Choral Director of the
Year by the Connecticut Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. In
the spring of 2007 Mr. Coffey was awarded the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from
the New Britain Alliance for the Arts and an Outstanding Achievement Award from
the Hartford Symphony Orchestra for the collaborations between the Hartford Chorale
and CONCORA with the Hartford Symphony. Last October, Coffey received the
Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his exceptional
contributions to choral music in New England.
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