Melinda O'Neal Conductor Melinda O'Neal has been praised for her “lucid and musical understanding of the score”, “moving and satisfying interpretations” and her “stylish and clear manner on the podium.” (Hugh Macdonald, Berlioz scholar and music critic.) She is newly appointed artistic director & conductor of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (MD), co-founder and conductor of Sonique, Boston Vocal Artists’ ten-voice professional chamber ensemble, and professor of music at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH). From 1979-2004 O’Neal was music director and conductor of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College, a student-community oratorio society

O’Neal’s collaborative work has included conducting the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra and Handel Society in performances of Poulenc’s Gloria and Brahms’ Schicksalslied and preparing the singers for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. As guest conductor-in-residence for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra Chorale in 1995, O’Neal prepared Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust for Gerard Schwarz. While chorus master for the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, O’Neal prepared the singers for Berlioz’s Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Of the Verdi Requiem performance, Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote, “The chorus master Melinda O'Neal had trained them to sing everything musically -- there was none of the fancy murmuring and false theatrics that disfigure so many performances of this genuinely dramatic music. Everything they did was clean and honest." Of Monadnock Music’s performance of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, Richard Binder wrote, "The 12-member chorus, prepared by Melinda O'Neal, was divine. Singing stylishly and with a superb balance both internally and in relation to the [solo] singers, they were one of the evening's highlights."

Dedicated to teaching and nurturing young singers, O’Neal conducted the all-undergraduate Dartmouth College Chamber Singers for seventeen years. This 32-voice ensemble presented an annual Feast of Song renaissance music-drama banquet and inaugurated a series of collaborations with the period instrument orchestra Arcadia Players (Amherst, MA), performing vocal-instrumental works by Purcell, Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Handel. Chamber Singers concertized on tour in England, Spain, Germany/Austria as well as the United States’ east coast and midwest. Chamber Singers regularly premièred works by Dartmouth faculty and students as part of the music department’s New Music Festival. In Hanover, O’Neal also founded and conducted the professional twelve-voice Groupe Vocale de St. Denis (Hanover, NH) which performed for evensong services and commissioned Musica Dei by Dartmouth music faculty member Charles Dodge.

Throughout her conducting career, O’Neal has actively engaged in teaching. For over 25 years O’Neal has taught, advised and mentored countless Dartmouth College students enrolled in music courses on campus and in London during the department’s study term abroad, in independent private conducting studies or as members of performing ensembles. Many alumni/ae continue a life-long involvement in music, and some have pursued graduate music studies at institutions including Columbia University, Indiana University, Eastman School of Music, University of Illinois, Peabody Institute, Florida State University and Boston University, to name a few. As a visiting professor in residence (1996-7), O’Neal taught conducting at the doctoral, masters and undergraduate levels at University of Georgia (Athens) where she also conducted the Concert Choir, University Chorus and Camerata. While visiting professor and conductor at Indiana University (1999), O’Neal conducted the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and taught and advised graduate conducting students.

In 2004-5 under O’Neal’s leadership, the Handel Choir of Baltimore, a newly reconfigured community oratorio ensemble of 40 voices with a seventy-year tradition of performing major works, will present baroque and classic style works of Handel, Bach, Mozart and Haydn with a period instrument orchestra, among other projects. A unique independent non-profit, the Handel Choir is dedicated both to high quality performance and to reaching out to educate children in the Baltimore community.

Since 2002, O’Neal has brought her versatility and knowledge of vocal repertoire to Boston Vocal Artists’ Sonique, performing solo and ensemble vocal chamber music composed from the nineteeth-century to the present in collaboration with Steven Morris. Upcoming concerts with Sonique will include new compositions by Christian Wolff, Charles Dodge, John D. McDonald and Ileana Perez Velazquez, and an array of music based on folksong and myth by Ravel, Britten and Brahms.

O’Neal holds masters and doctoral degrees in choral-orchestral conducting from Indiana University in Bloomington and a bachelors in music education from Florida State University in Tallahassee. She studied score preparation, choral literature and conducting with Julius Herford, Jan Harrington, Fiora Contino, Helmuth Rilling, Robert Shaw, Marcel Couraud, John Nelson and Thomas Dunn. At Dartmouth O’Neal teaches courses in conducting, studies in music and text, and music theory. Her continuing research and performance interests include the relationship of text and music, historical performance practices, and the music of Hector Berlioz. O’Neal gives lectures and workshop demonstrations on Berlioz’s vocal music, and she is currently working on a guide for performing this repertoire. Her articles on Mozart, Berlioz and performance practices may be located in the Choral Journal, Journal of the Conductors Guild, and Becoming the Complete Conductor (ECS Publishing). O’Neal is a past board member of the Conductors Guild and serves on the research and publications committee of the American Choral Directors Association.