Edward Bolkovac 
Primrose Fuller Professor of Choral Music; Division Director
Email: bolkovac@hartford.edu
Dr. Bolkovac started his teaching career at Holy Names College in Oakland, California (now Holy Names University) where he was appointed as a full-time faculty member at age 26 to teach in the Kodály Graduate Music Education Program. Then he taught ear training, choral conducting, conducted the college choirs, and later directed the college orchestra for three years, and eventually became the Director of the
Kodály program. Shortly after his arrival at Holy Names, he also began the first of over twenty international trips to teach and conduct in Australia, England, New Zealand, The Philippines, and Taiwan. His first appointment as a Music Director was with the Bay Area Lutheran Chorale, a community chorus based in San Francisco that perfromed the standard choral/orchestral repertoire. He later earned his doctorate, and became the Artistic Director of the California Bach Society. Following this appointment, he became very involved in the San Francisco Bay Area's rich early music scene, revitalizing the California Bach Society into one of the Bay Area's finest Baroque ensembles, and working frequently with some of the finest singers and orchestral players.
After 16 years in the Bay Area, he moved to Australia to take up the position of Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Queensland in Brisbane where he directed the university choral ensembles and taught ear training and choral conducting. While at the University of Queensland, Dr. Bolkovac was nominated for an Excellence in Teaching Award, and also won a competitive national grant to Berlin and The Library of Congress to study perfromance practice styles in early commercial recordings of the choral music of Brahms. He became known throughout Australia for his performances of Baroque oratorios, his many international workshops, and artistic leadership of the Brisbane Early Music Festival. His performances in Australia received consistently favorable reviews in the local and national press:
"An inspired performance . . . Handel's noble phrases were shaped with skill and ingenuity . . ."--The Sunday Mail, Brisbane, Australia
"Bolkovac's Maccabeus has, before all else, style . . . Concentus, now three years old, has developed a distinctive, baroque tone of colour, light and sharp definition."--The Australian, Sydney
"The general joy of the Concentus singers responding to conductor Bolkovac's exacting sensitivity made this a performance to savour."--Courier-Mail, Brisbane
After four busy and productive years in Australia he returned to the United States in 1999 and took up the position of Primrose Fuller Professor of Choral Music at The Hartt School and leadership of its Vocal Studies Division in 2001. In 2003 he became the Artistic Director of the New Haven Chorale, a community-based oratorio choir. He has conducted a wide array of performances since coming to Hartt, several with The Hartt choruses and Hartt Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the New Haven Chorale. Some of the major works have included Argento's I Love and I Hate, Bach's Magnificat, Te Deum and Benvenuto Cellini Overture by Berlioz, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Bloch's Sacred Service, Britten's Five Flower Songs, Brahms's Schicksalslied, Nanie and Ein deutsches Requiem, Carissimi's Jonas, Copland's Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land (Rivera concert version), Duruflé's Requiem, Handel's Alexander's Feast, Haydn's Creation and Symphony #13 in D Major, 'Mars' and 'Jupiter' from Holst's The Planets, Kodály's Missa Brevis, Mozart's Requiem, Coronation Mass and Symphony #29 in D Major, Stabat Mater by Szymanowski, Verdi's Requiem, and Dona nobis pacem and A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams. Dr. Bolkovac leads annual 'Sing for the City' concerts to raise money for local charities and co-founded Hartford Concerts for Charities with Ezequiel Menendez, Director of Music at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford. He served as minister of music at several churches in California and is currently the pianist and organist at Wharburton Community Congregational Church in Hartford. Dr. Bolkovac has led Hartt choral tours to Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary. He recently completed a textbook with co-author Anne Comiskey entitled, Developing Harmonic Hearing.
Education:
D.M.A., Stanford University, 1993
M.M., SUNY-Binghamton, 1980
Diploma, Kodály Zenepedagógiai Intézet, 1976
Conducting Study, Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia, 1977
B.S. in Music Education, Duquesne University, 1975
Conducting study with David Buttolph, Thomas Dunn and Péter Erdei
Publications:
§ Sing We Now Merrily. New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 2008.
§ "Wegweiser-a 'Guidepost' to Understanding the Harmonic Language of Schubert" Bulletin of the International Kodály Society, Autumn 1997.
§ 150 Rounds for Singing and Teaching. New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 1996. Introduction to Basic Choral Conducting. Brisbane: Clayfield School of Music, 1995.
§ Musica barocca. (CD Recording) Palo Alto: Guidonian Records, 1994