Dr. Joshua Habermann has been appointed Artistic Director of the Master Chorale of South Florida beginning August 1, 2008. For the past 12 years, Dr. Habermann has served as Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Director of Choral Activities at San Francisco State University. He was recently named director of Choral Studies at the University of Miami.

A professional tenor as well as conductor, Habermann performs regularly with the Oregon Bach Festival (Eugene) and Conspirare (Austin, Texas). He is fluent in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and is a seasoned coach of Latin, Russian and Finnish.

In his position as Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, he has prepared the ensemble for performances with world-class guest conductors in both standard and contemporary choral/orchestral literature. Upon Vance George’s retirement in 2006, he served as Interim Chorus Director, preparing programs for Michael Tilson Thomas and Charles Dutoit.

His accomplishments as a teacher are equally impressive. His San Francisco State University choirs were invited to appear at the California Music Educator’s Association Conference in 1999 (Sacramento) and 2001 (Pasadena), and have undertaken tours to China (2000), Cuba (2002) and Germany and the Czech Republic (2004). In 2003 The SFSU Chamber Choir was a featured guest at the Waging Peace Choral Festival at the University of Oregon, and in 2006 they collaborated with the Orchestre des Jeunes de Provence in performances of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem throughout France. They were recognized by the International Federation of Choral Music as the only American choir to be invited to perform at the América Cantat choral conference in Havana, Cuba, in April 2007. This year, they performed at the American Choral Directors Association convention in Anaheim, California.

Dr. Habermann is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University (1990), and obtained his graduate education in choral conducting at the University of Texas at Austin, receiving an MM in 1995 and DMA in 1997.

His concert debut as Artistic Director for the Master Chorale of South Florida will take place November 14-16, 2008, in performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.