LISA GRAHAM is in her eighteenth season as Music Director of the Metropolitan Chorale. Under her leadership, the Chorale’s membership has grown in size to 100 members who hail from communities throughout the Boston area. Dr. Graham has shaped the Chorale’s programming to include contemporary, American, and lesser-known programs, 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 guest appearance conducting the Metropolitan Chorale and the Boston Pops last December, 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, South Korea, and the Baltics in addition to domestic tours annually. In 2010, the Choir was chosen to perform at the American Choral Directors 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. She has toured with and served as cover conductor for the Boston Pops for eight seasons. In 2016, she prepared members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for Charles Dutoit’s BSO performance of Holst’s The Planets.
Prior to her arrival in the Boston area, Dr. Graham was on the conducting faculty at California State University Northridge. She taught conducting at the University of Southern California where she earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees, while serving as Assistant Conductor to the USC Thornton Chamber Choir under the direction of Dr. William Dehning. As a vocalist, Dr. Graham has performed as a soprano soloist and has toured extensively.
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 Directors Association, as well as the Eastern Division ACDA, and is an active guest conductor, clinician, and festival adjudicator. Dr. Graham is the 2021 winner of the American Prize Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting. Her Masters and Doctoral Degrees were earned at the University of Southern California.