May 23, 2011 (Boston, MA) – The Handel and Haydn Society is pleased to announce a series of new appointments across the organization. The May 19th Board meeting welcomed Stephen Morrissey to the Board of Governors and Dr. Holly M. Carter, Dr. Paul Corneilson, and Benjamin Kim to the Board of Overseers. H&H recently welcomed Judi DeJager as Director of Development. Effective with the 2011–2012 Season, Guy Fishman, member of the Period Instrument Orchestra since 2002, will be appointed principal cellist; and Sonja Tengblad and Carrie Cheron will join H&H’s Vocal Quartet, leading the school visits that are an integral part of the Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program. These new appointments come at a key juncture as the Handel and Haydn Society builds momentum for its upcoming Bicentennial celebration in 2015.

Executive Director/CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard reflected, “The Handel and Haydn Society is committed to recruiting great leadership and the finest talent to support and serve its artistic and educational programs. These respected leaders, professionals, and musicians will help bring new inspiration and energy to the organization as we enter an exciting phase, plan for the Bicentennial, and continue to grow the audience for H&H’s activities.”

Board Appointments
Stephen Morrissey, newly appointed Governor, has been an Overseer since 2008 and a Handel and Haydn Society subscriber for over twenty years. He is Managing Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, where he has worked since 1989. Morrissey graduated from Dartmouth College and has a PhD from Boston University. He also serves on the Board of Overseers of the Brookline Education Foundation.

Dr. Holly M. Carter joins the Board of Overseers with a wealth of expertise and over thirty years of professional experience in the areas of curriculum and program development, training, strategic planning, and organizational development. She has served on the Northeastern University faculty and is a tenured professor in the College of Arts and Sciences School of Education. She currently serves as Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Acting Chairperson for the Department of Education in the College of Professional Studies. Carter received her BA from Boston University and her Master’s degree and PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a concentration in International Relations/Development and Asian Studies. Carter’s mother, Barbara . Maze, served on the H&H Board from 1993–2009 and was instrumental in creating the Vocal Apprenticeship Program.

Dr. Paul Corneilson, a native of Pennsylvania, received a BA in Music from Gettysburg College as well as both a Master’s degree and PhD in Historical Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2000 he became Managing Editor of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, a critical edition published by The Packard Humanities Institute. Since 2000 he has been an Associate of the Music Department at Harvard University. In addition to his new role at Handel and Haydn on the Board of Overseers, Corneilson is a founding member of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music, and has served two terms on the Board of Directors. He is a member-at-large of the American Musicological Society Council, on the Board of Directors of the Mozart Society of America, and Secretary of the American Friends of the Bach-Archive Leipzig (established in 2010).

Benjamin Kim is currently an MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to MIT, he worked in the aerospace industry for six years as an internal consultant, advising the Department of Defense and NASA programs on improving their program management and operations. He also worked in the consumer product goods industry for several years. A lifelong fan of classical music, Ben grew up attending concerts at the Philadelphia Orchestra and enjoys visiting concert venues throughout North America and Europe. He has two Master’s degrees in Engineering from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Director of Development
Judi DeJager comes to the Handel and Haydn Society from St. Francis House in Boston, where she was a Major Gift Officer since 2008. DeJager successfully solicited gifts as part of a Capital Campaign, as well as directed strategy for cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship efforts for the organization. She brings over 15 years of experience working for nonprofit organizations in the Chicago and Boston areas, with a depth of knowledge in both the development and communications fields. In addition to her work within the field, DeJager was an Associate Professor at Columbia College in Chicago, IL, where she taught “Oceanography and the Marine Environment.” DeJager received her BA in Communication Arts & Sciences from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.

Principal Cellist
Israeli-born cellist Guy Fishman has been a member of the Handel and Haydn Society Period Instrument Orchestra since 2002. Fishman is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, performing in recital and with Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Museum Trio, Arcadia Players, and El Mundo. Recent highlights include recitals with Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, with Eliot Fisk, and performances at the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, as well as touring and recording with pop artist Natalie Merchant. Fishman was a member of the New Fromm Players at Tanglewood, principal cellist of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and has performed in fringe recitals at the Boston Early Music Festival. Fishman began playing the cello at age 12, and at 16 began his Baccalaureate studies at the Manhattan School of Music. He completed his Doctoral studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition, Fishman is a Fulbright Fellow, and spent his fellowship year in Amsterdam studying with the famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma.

Vocal Quartet
Sonja Tengblad, soprano, is currently a member of the Handel and Haydn Society’s chorus and also performs with the Lorelei Ensemble and as soloist at Old North Congregational Church in Marblehead. Tengblad is a Choral Artist with the Metropolitan Opera Guild Urban Voices school program and lead teacher for the Cantata Singers Classroom Cantatas project. She is a graduate of St. Olaf College, where she earned a BA in Vocal Music Education.

Carrie Cheron, mezzo-soprano, holds music degrees from Indiana University (BA in Voice, with a minor in French) and New England Conservatory (MM Vocal Performance). Cheron was a music teacher for AileyCamp Boston and is the alto soloist at Old South Church, Boston. She has performed with Boston Baroque, Boston Secession, Exsultemus, Philovox, and Vox Consort.

The Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program
Established in 1985, the Handel and Haydn Society’s Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program was created with strong ties to the organization’s early leaders. Lowell Mason, best known as the founding father of music education in American public schools, enjoyed a long association with Handel and Haydn, first as musical editor and later as President of H&H from 1827–1832. Mason taught classes at the Bowdoin Street Church and founded the Boston Academy of Music in 1833 to promote music education to the public. When Handel and Haydn launched its official educational initiative in 1985, it focused on public education with its free school visits that now reach public schools in nine Massachusetts districts; the Collaborative Youth Concerts followed in 1987, in which students from different school districts and cultural backgrounds come together to perform for their communities alongside musicians.

In 1994, the Handel and Haydn Society started the Vocal Apprenticeship Program (VAP) with Youth Chorus (grades 6–8) and the High School Soloists program, held at New England Conservatory. Later, VAP reached younger students with Singers (grades 3–5) and high school students with its Young Men’s (grades 8–12) and Young Women’s (grades 9–12) Choruses, so that students could grow with the program for several years, increasing their individual sense of accomplishment as they passed through each level. Students enrolled in VAP learn music theory and receive performance opportunities throughout each season. VAP classes take place in the state-of-the-art music division wing of the Boston Latin School, located in one of the most culturally accessible neighborhoods of Boston, next to Massachusetts College of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Handel and Haydn Society is the only professional music organization in Massachusetts serving as a parent to its own children’s choir program and regularly presenting them in conjunction with its professional series at Symphony Hall. VAP is also the only children’s choir program in New England to include individualized scholarships for vocal instruction, diction, and other classes for potential music majors in collaboration with New England Conservatory.

ABOUT HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY
The Handel and Haydn Society is a professional chorus and period instrument orchestra that is an internationally recognize­d leader in the field of Historically Informed Performance, a revelatory style that uses the instruments and techniques of the composer’s time. Founded in Boston in 1815, the H&H is the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the United States and has a longstanding commitment to excellence and innovation: it gave the American premieres of Handel’s Messiah (1818), Haydn’s The Creation (1819), Verdi’s Requiem (1878) and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1879). Handel and Haydn today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, is committed to its mission to perform Baroque and Classical music at the highest levels of artistic excellence and to share that music with as large and diverse an audience as possible. H&H is widely known through its local subscription concerts, tours, concert broadcasts on WGBH/99.5 Classical and National Public Radio, and recordings. The Society’s Lamentations and Praises won a 2002 Grammy Award and two of its CDs, All is Bright and PEACE, appeared simultaneously in the top ten on Billboard Magazine’s classical music chart. In September 2010, Handel and Haydn released its first collaboration with Harry Christophers on the CORO label, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor—the first in a series of live commercial recordings leading to the Society’s Bicentennial in 2015. The 2010–2011 Season marks the 25th anniversary of Handel and Haydn’s award-winning Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program, which brings music education, vocal training, and performance opportunities to 10,000 students annually throughout Greater Boston and beyond.

Handel and Haydn Society is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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