Under the leadership of Artistic Director Andrew Clark, the Providence Singers has evolved into a choral arts organization of national prominence, garnering critical praise for engaging and innovative concerts of choral masterpieces, contemporary music and rarely performed works.

The Providence Journal hailed his debut performance as artistic director, as “a smashing success ... if the Providence Singers never sang another note, they would have pretty much said it all ... it’s hard to imagine a professional chorus doing it better.”

During his tenure, Clark has led the organization to new levels of distinction in community engagement as well as artistic performance, developing exciting music education programs and dynamic partnerships with organizations and creative artists throughout the region. The Providence Singers received the 2008 Jabez Gorham Award from the Arts & Business Council of Rhode Island for “unwavering commitment to excellence, significant impact in the community and successful organizational development,” and the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded multiple grants to the organization for adventurous projects during his tenure.

In 2008, the Providence Singers released its debut recording, Lukas Foss’s cantata The Prairie, with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP). Clark conducted the ensemble in concert and in the recording studio. The first available CD of this seminal work of American music received critical acclaim from publications worldwide as “an artistic triumph” praising “Andrew Clark’s appropriately heroic interpretation” (Choral Journal), and as a “recording [that] belongs in any decent library of 20th-century music” (American Record Guide).

This season, the Providence Singers will release its second recording, Jonah and the Whale, by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento and will perform and record Lou Harrison’s La Koro Sutro for chorus and American gamelan with BMOP.

As a fierce advocate for the works of our time, Clark has commissioned dozens of composers, presented more than 30 world premières, and led numerous performances of important contemporary works. In addition, Clark frequently conducts choral-orchestral masterpieces, most recently Handel’s Messiah (Rhode Island Philharmonic), Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, the Mozart Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Worcester Chorus and Orchestra), the Fauré Requiem, Brahms’ Schicksalslied, the Poulenc Gloria and Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem (Tufts University).

Clark has collaborated with renowned organizations including the Kronos Quartet, the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Opera Boston, and the Newport Jazz Festival, appearing at prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, Stephansdom, Vienna, Mechanics Hall (Worcester, Mass.) and throughout Europe and the United States.

As director of choral activities at Tufts University since 2003, Clark leads a thriving choral performance program, tripling student participation during his tenure. The Tufts choirs have performed at Boston Symphony Hall, Faneuil Hall and throughout Europe. Clark frequently conducts high school choral festivals and clinics and serves as a faculty member of the “Notes from the Heart” music camp, a summer program for children with disabilities and chronic illness.

Clark received degrees from Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon universities, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University, having studied with Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page, Jameson Marvin and Ann Howard Jones. He previously served as music director of the Worcester Chorus (2006-2009) and on the conducting faculties of Harvard and Clark universities, and as assistant conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and the Boston Pops Holiday Chorus. He is a member of the national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda and has been recognized by Chorus America as one of our country’s most promising young conductors.