It’s a time of change for the Society - our long serving musical director, Christopher Barr has left us. Chris has been our conductor for thirteen years and the choir has enjoyed rising to the challenges he set us, working hard to improve.

Dr. Jennifer Margaret Barker is our new musical director.

A native of Scotland, Dr Barker is Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Delaware in the United States of America. She is a composer, pianist and music director. Her more than thirty years of experience as a music director includes working with choirs, chamber ensembles, string/wind/brass/percussion ensembles and orchestras. It also includes many opera and music theatre productions, from Puccini’s Le Villi and Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief to Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, Loesser’s Guys and Dolls, and Kander/Ebb’s Chicago. She has a passion for supporting living composers and as a result has conducted the premieres of numerous concert works and chamber operas.

Dr. Barker’s love of choral music ignited her path into music composition and has led to a highly successful career as a composer of contemporary classical music. To date she has received performances, recordings and radio/web broadcasts of her music across five continents in addition to an extensive list of commissions. Hailed by critics as “extraordinarily moving”, “soul-stirring”, “at once gripping and timeless”, “show-stopping”, “anything but passive”, “blazingly alive, with lovely, aching melodies” and “haunting”, her compositions have been performed by orchestras such as the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Wind Orchestra; chamber and choral ensembles such as the Tiger Lily Trio, Orchestra 2001, Network for New Music, Relâche, 6-WIRE, Vocal de Cámara Platense and the Bearsden Choir; and an extensive list of international artists including British pianist Martin Jones, Alice K. Dade (Powell Artist), John Novacek (Steinway Artist) and Christopher Nichols (Buffet Crampon USA Artist). Among her recent composition awards are the 2025 LunART Artist Fellowship; the 2022 Miriam Gideon Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music; the 2022 New Ariel Piano Composition Competition; and the 2021 Masters Fellowship Award from the Delaware Division of the Arts for artistic excellence and contributions to the State of Delaware. Her compositions have been released on the Naxos, Albany, New World Records, Composers Recordings Inc., Meyer Media, and PnOVA recording labels.

Dr. Barker’s website can be viewed at: www.jennifermargaretbarker.com