Colin Britt

I’m honored and delighted to announce that, beginning in the fall of 2023, I will be serving as the Director of Choral Studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts! I’m thrilled to return to college teaching, and to work with these outstanding students and historic choral ensembles at one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country. Additionally, as several of my dear friends work in the Five Colleges, I am excited to be joining some incredible colleagues in the Pioneer Valley region.

It is always bittersweet to close one chapter of your life and begin another one. We uprooted our lives in Connecticut and moved to New Jersey almost exactly 10 years ago so I could begin my doctoral studies at Rutgers with Patrick Gardner. Since then, I’ve had some unbelievable opportunities and experiences – performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall (including a premiere with the Voorhees Choir, conducted by Brandon Williams), travels to England and the Netherlands with the Rutgers University Glee Club, singing and conducting with C4, ACDA performances with the RU Glee Club, Kirkpatrick Choir, and C4, serving as sabbatical replacement conductor with the SUNY New Paltz choral department and the Rutgers University Voorhees Choir, directing Amuse Singers in New York and North River Sing in Jersey City, serving as music director at Grace Church Van Vorst for nearly 10 years, and now currently serving as one of the eleven conductors in the premiere of Jonathan Dove’s “Search For Spring” at Lincoln Center this May. And of course, my long-term appointment as choir director at Rutgers Preparatory School has been one of the most gratifying and life-changing teaching experiences of my life, introducing me to some of the most amazing and inspiring students I’ve ever met. Meanwhile, in our personal lives we finally bought our first house in central New Jersey, and in 2021 we welcomed the birth of our daughter Mia. Life here has been good to us, even through a global pandemic.

I’m very grateful to be continuing in my capacity as artistic director and conductor of the West Village Chorale, where we are busy preparing for our May 21st performance of Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor – stay tuned for more information about that! But of course, I look forward to many more years of exciting, inclusive, and genre-bending work with this outstanding chorus in New York City. And there’s a lot more to come from Terpsichore Ensemble as well, perhaps not only in the New York/New Jersey area but also up in New England!

Tori’s family is from Massachusetts, and mine still lives in Maine, so it also feels good to be making a move closer to our roots. And it’s reassuring knowing that, at the very least, I will be back in New York every Tuesday during the regular season. But it’s still hard to say goodbye to the life we’ve built here, and to the friends and neighbors who have become family.

I am excited to see what this new chapter will bring for us. Thank you for your support and encouragement, and for coming along for this journey.