William Weinert

Since 1994, William Weinert has served as Professor of Conducting and Director of Choral Activities at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, where he conducts the Eastman Chorale and the Eastman-Rochester Chorus and supervises the masters and doctoral programs in choral conducting. He has conducted throughout Europe, United States, and the Far East, and has served throughout the country as a clinician and an adjudicator, as well as giving numerous conducting master classes in North America, Europe and Asia. Ensembles under Weinert’s direction have performed at conferences of the American Choral Directors’ Association, National Collegiate Choral Organization, and Music Educators’ National Conference, and he has conducted master classes and honor choruses for these organizations as well.

Weinert is also founder and music director of Voices, Rochester’s only professional chamber chorus. This ensemble has performed repertoire from the Baroque period to contemporary compositions to critical acclaim since 2007. Voices has performed both Bach Passions and the Mass in B-minor, as well as two complete cycles of all the Bach motets.

The graduate programs in conducting at Eastman have repeatedly been ranked by US News and World Report as the finest in the country. A small number of students are admitted to these degree programs, and they are given significant podium experience with regular Eastman ensembles. In recent years Eastman choral conducting students have won first place in the ACDA national student conducting competitions in both the graduate and undergraduate divisions, and Eastman doctoral graduates in choral conducting have won the Julius Herford Prize, the American Choral Directors Association annual award for the best doctoral research project in choral conducting.

Weinert holds the A. B. in history and B.Mus. in music education from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music; the M.M. in conducting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and both the M.M. in music history and D.M.A. in conducting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied with Robert Fountain, and then taught for five years as Fountain’s assistant. He has previously served on the faculties of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (1982-84), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-89), and the University of Southern Mississippi (1989-94), and has served for three summers as guest professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany.