President
Bio
Lisa Graham is in her sixteenth season as Music Director of the Metropolitan Chorale. Under her leadership, the Chorale’s membership has grown in size to more than 100 members who hail from communities throughout the Greater Boston area. Dr. Graham has shaped the Chorale’s programming to include contemporary, American, and lesser-known works, alongside the masterworks of the repertory. She has enhanced the reputation and reach of the Chorale through collaborations with acclaimed vocalists and instrumentalists, as well as established composers of our day. In a review of her appearance conducting the Metropolitan Chorale and the Boston Pops, Broadway World praised Dr. Graham as “a spellbinding maestro, balletic in her direction … a great connection with her performers on stage.”
In addition to her role as Music Director for the Metropolitan Chorale, Dr. Graham is the Evelyn Barry Director of Choral Programs at Wellesley College, where she conducts the Wellesley College Choir, Chamber Singers, and Choral Scholars, in addition to teaching academic courses in the Music Department. Under her direction, the Wellesley College Choirs have toured internationally in Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Portugal and South Korea, in addition to domestic tours annually. In 2010, the Choir was chosen to perform at the American Choral Director’s Regional Convention in Philadelphia and appeared again in 2016 as part of the ACDA Eastern Division conference in Boston. Both the Chamber Singers and the Choir are featured in the motion picture Mona Lisa Smile.
Active in the Boston musical scene, she is a frequent conductor with Handel + Haydn Society, directing their Holiday Sing concert for several seasons and enjoying a ten-year history of working with their educational outreach program. In 2016, she prepared members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for Charles Dutoit’s BSO performance of Holst’s The Planets. Additionally, she is a founding member and former President of the National Collegiate Choral Conductor’s Organization and was honored as a Life Member for her service in 2019. She has served as a Choir Repertoire and Standards Chair for the Massachusetts American Choral Director’s Association, as well as the Eastern Division ACDA, and is an active guest conductor, clinician, and festival adjudicator.