After a two-year search, the Boston Symphony has just announced the hiring of a new permanent Director of Choruses. Jean-Sébastien Vallée [website HERE] will occupy the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Chair and also serve as the BSO’s official Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.The BSO has recently embarked on new partnerships with local universities, and Vallée’s re-thinking of the position will place more responsibility in the hands (and voices) of local music faculty and students. The BSO x NEC Honor Children’s Choir, led by Michele Adams, will collaborate with the TFC this season on Golijov’s Creation,  and two programs under the direction of Andris Nelsons: two star-studded performances of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame (with a cast led by Kristine Opolais, info HERE) and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 [info HERE].

After a successful trial run at Tanglewood in August and other programs with the TFC last season, Vallée wrote to the current (all-volunteer) choristers this week: “It feels wonderful to officially begin our journey together. The 2026–27 season will be a year of transition, but I want to reassure you that my leadership of the TFC begins now. I am already fully engaged in overseeing our choral activities and, just as importantly, in shaping the planning, structure, and artistic vision that will guide the chorus in the years ahead. Because my appointment came after I had already committed to several engagements for this season, I won’t be able to personally prepare every project—but I will remain closely involved in the overall work and direction of the chorus throughout the year.” Read the full BSO press release HERE.

This season, Vallée will personally prepare concerts of Haydn’s Creation [to be sung in German and with performances conducted by the Vienna State Opera’s Philippe Jordan], Golijov’s Creation, Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, and the Mahler concerts, as well as the two Tanglewood residencies in summer 2027. For the other two projects, he has invited Daniel Parsley [website HERE], Director of Choral Activities and Coordinator of Conducting at Boston University (for Holiday concerts with the Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops in December) and Erica Washburn [website HERE], Director of Choral Activities and Conducting at New England Conservatory (for the Saariaho/Ravel program).

Vallée continues, “Beginning with the 2027–28 season [… I will be] with the TFC for the full season. I come to the TFC with tremendous respect for what this chorus already is. Its history, the dedication and talent of its singers, and the extraordinary musical foundation built over decades are at the heart of everything we will do next. My first priority is the chorus itself: continuing to develop the excellence of our singing, our individual and collective choral skills, and our ability to communicate with freedom, commitment, and expressive power.”

Future plans for the organization include an event featuring the full 200+ membership of the chorus; a “Big Sing” at Symphony Hall, bringing hundreds of singers from across the region together with the TFC for an afternoon of communal music-making; and a new choral conducting graduate fellowship in partnership with New England Conservatory.Current singers will participate in annual spring vocal check-ins, dispensing with the controversial and stressful multi-part “re-audition” winnowing process that caused roughly 60% of the TFC to depart (voluntarily or involuntarily) over the last ten years. Read the 2018 BMInt coverage of early reactions to that process HERE. Many new and excellent voices have joined the group during the same period, establishing new benefits for credentialed K-12 music teachers in the ensemble and lowering the median age of the membership at some cost to the institutional knowledge that had won awards under John Oliver’s longtime leadership [read this author’s discussion of the conclusion of Oliver’s long service to the BSO in an article ten years ago HERE]. The BSO maintains a page honoring some of that storied history HERE]. Oliver will soon be honored posthumously with a new grant named in his honor to be coordinated by Choral Arts New England, a 46-year-old funding body that supports choruses, conductors, and choral commissions throughout the Northeast [CANE website HERE].

Vallée will be hearing auditions for new voices starting in the first week of October [audition info HERE], and he wrote to the current membership, “First, there will be no ‘re-audition’ this season. In fact, I don’t particularly like that term. Once you are a member of the TFC, I don’t believe you should feel that you have to ‘win your spot back’ every year. Beginning later this spring, I plan instead to introduce a simple annual voice check. This will involve recording a few short musical excerpts at home and submitting them for me to review. The goal is not to create an annual audition, but to give me a clear understanding of the voices within our ensemble and to create a regular opportunity for feedback and conversation about each singer’s development, challenges, and opportunities.” Current members have already started to prepare Haydn’s Creation [info HERE] and will soon begin work on a contrasting oratorio of the same title by the contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov [info HERE]. Singers have been invited to attend a “TFC Town Hall” on October 28^th, both in person and online.

Vallée will lead concerts of Mozart’s choral music with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir next week and with Montréal’s Orchestre I Musici and the Schulich Singers later in the month. He continues to serve the faculty of McGill University, whose students sometime call Harvard “the McGill of America.” Vallée sees a bright future for his new post, commenting, “I could not be more excited about what lies ahead. We have an extraordinary foundation to build upon, and I believe there is enormous potential for the TFC—not only in what we can achieve on stage, but in the role this chorus can play within the BSO, within Boston, and within the broader choral community.”