Barbara Wesley Baker

Barbara Wesley Baker, internationally noted conductor and educator, conducts the Women's, Men's, Concert Chorale, Gospel, and Chamber Choirs at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, and for 24 years has directed the Gospel Choir at Colesville United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her choirs have won numerous first place trophies and received superior ratings at state, national and international festivals. Dr. Baker frequently presents sessions at national, division, and state conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association. She was a headliner at the Southwest Division MENC/TMEC conference on Urban Education in Dallas, Texas, June 2003. She also presented sessions at PERSPECTIVES Music Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June, 2003. She has conducted master classes at Ithaca College with Dr. Janet Galvan, Virginia Wesleyan College Church Music Workshop, the Toronto International Music Festival and the Choral Music Experience/British Choral Institute, Hertfordshire, England for Dr. Doreen Rao. Dr. Baker conducted the 2000 ACDA Eastern Division High School Honor Choir, and her Chamber Choir performed with Dave Brubeck at the 2000 MENC National Convention in Washington, D.C. She has guest-conducted state and regional honor choirs in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Mississippi, New York, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Virginia. Dr. Baker has taught and conducted secondary school students in Limerick and Dublin, Ireland for the Royal Dublin Society. Dr. Baker has taught at the Hartt School of Music Summer Session with Dr. Doreen Rao, McDaniel College, (formerly Western Maryland College) and at the Brightleaf Music Workshop at Duke University. For three years Dr. Baker was co-music director for The Choral Arts Society of Washington's Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Choral Tribute at the John F. Kennedy Center. Her Women's Choir performed on the 2003 program as a featured choir heard in January 2004 on the National Public Radio broadcast of last year's concert.

Dr. Baker earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; the M.A. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, N.Y.; and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland. While completing her doctorate, she was selected as an American Association of University Women Research Fellow. She has published articles in scholarly journals, including The College Music Society, and contributed material on Black Gospel music to several textbooks. She is a contributor to Teacher to Teacher, A Music Educator's Survival Guide (2004). She is editor of a new choral series with Alliance Music Publications and was honored as a 1998 Maryland Distinguished Woman in the Arts and as the Outstanding Secondary Vocal Music Teacher in Maryland in 1991. She is past president of the Maryland ACDA chapter and serves on the Advisory Board for the music education publication, Teaching Music. . She is married and is the proud parent of a Yale varsity football player.

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