Artistic Director
"The single most reinforcing, life-affirming experience I know is to sing in a really great choir."
Maestro Eric Townell is an experienced and creative conductor of operatic, orchestral and choral repertoire from the Baroque period through the 21st Century. Since joining the Rochester Oratorio Society in 2006, he has led the ROS in subscription concerts, regional outreach performances, live radio broadcasts, a televised concert, collaborative concerts with the region’s leading arts organizations, a concert tour to Eastern Europe and an award-winning tour to Beijing and Shanghai for the 2008 Olympic Cultural Festival.
Maestro Townell has prepared the Rochester Oratorio Society for a number of appearances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for conductors Christopher Seaman, Jeff Tyzik, Ward Stare, and numerous guests, performing the music of Bach, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Handel, Verdi, Gershwin, and Orff, among numerous others. In 2008, Eric also established Resonanz, a select high-quality choral ensemble that represents the Rochester Oratorio Society at special engagements.
Eric concurrently directs the Finger Lakes Choral Festival. He is the former music director of the Festival Choir of Madison (1993-2006), the Master Singers of Milwaukee (2003-2010) and the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra (1991-2001). He holds a doctorate of musical arts degree from the Peabody Conservatory and degrees in music performance and conducting from Northern Illinois University and Indiana University. He studied conducting and solfege with Catherine Comet at St. Louis Conservatory; opera conducting with Georg Tintner in the Czech Republic; orchestral conducting with Frederik Prausnitz at Peabody and Charles Bruck at the Monteux School, and choral/orchestral conducting with Helmuth Rilling as a member of the 2002 Master Class at the Oregon Bach Festival. An experienced and effective communicator on music and arts topics, Eric is in demand as clinician and adjudicator for choral and orchestral festivals and for choirs of all types across the country. He has offered pre-concert chats, creative consultation and program annotation for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic and several other ensembles and chamber music series. Eric is a frequent commentator on arts topics on WXXI radio and serves the Boards of the William Warfield Scholarship Fund and the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. He is the producer and host of “In the Spotlight,” an arts interview program distributed via cable access television stations throughout Western New York. His orchestral and choral conducting were the subject of the 1994 Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast “Music from Wisconsin: A Wisconsin Conductor.”
Our
Past Leaders
Theodore Hollenbach
Music Director of the Rochester Oratorio Society from 1945 to 1986
In December 1945, Theodore Hollenbach, a young choral conductor with a master’s degree from Eastman School of Music, raised his baton for the first time to conduct the Rochester Oratorio Society in Handel’s Messiah. Mr. Hollenbach had been conducting a chorus of Taylor Instruments employees. Some of his singers proposed that the group become a true community chorus and invited Mr. Hollenbach to become its conductor. He immediately accepted the challenge and led 300 singers in that first concert on Dec. 30, 1945.
Born in Brooklyn, the son of a Methodist minister, Mr. Hollenbach grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He attended Houghton College before entering Eastman School. His career was influenced by a period of study with internationally-renowned conductor Pierre Monteux.
In the summer of 1981, at the invitation of the European Symposium of Choral Masterworks, Mr. Hollenbach led L’Orchestre Lamoreux of Paris and singers from his own group, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, D.C., the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and soloists in a highly acclaimed performance of Rossini’s Stabet Mater in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. In 1983 he conducted members of his society and others from the United States and Europe, including the Hamburg Singakademie, in the Verdi Requiem in Verona, Italy. Maestro Hollenbach was a recipient of the Mahler-Bruckner Society’s Mahler Medal. His recording of the Berlioz Requiem with the Oratorio Society was praised by High Fidelity magazine as a performance of great power and conviction.
In addition to directing the Rochester Oratorio Society for 40 years, Hollenbach was for over 30 years the organist and choirmaster for the Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester; was director of the annual Bach Festival for 30 years; and served as conductor of the Corning, NY Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus.
