Meet the Director

After guest conducting the 30th Anniversary Concert of Boston’s Back Bay Chorale, Scott Allen Jarrett was named its fifth music director. The performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus garnered critical acclaim from the Boston Globe: “Judas Maccabaeus was a great success...This was Jarrett’s night—he’s tasteful and talented, someone to keep our eyes and ears on.” A native of Virginia, Jarrett came to Boston in 1997 to pursue graduate degrees at Boston University, where he received his doctorate in conducting. Since that first performance, Jarrett has led the Chorale in memorable performance of Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri, the Saint Matthew Passion of Bach, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. Highlights of the current season will be Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, the New England premiere of Finzi’s Requiem da camera, and the world premiere My dark-eyed one . . . , a commissioned work by composer and former Back Bay Chorale music director, Julian Wachner.

This fall, Jarrett returns for his fifth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte, the resident chorus of the Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina. He travels to North Carolina weekly for rehearsals with the Oratorio Singers, preparing and leading the chorus for their appearances with the Symphony throughout the season. In addition to choral preparation for performances of the Fauré Requiem and the Beethoven Mass in C, Jarrett will lead the chorus and orchestra in a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass and the annual performances of Handel’s Messiah. In recent seasons with the Charlotte Symphony, Jarrett conducted performances of Brahms’s Schicksalslied, Schumann’s Nachtlied, Messiah, Barber’s Prayers of Kierkegaard, Handel’s Saul and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4. Each year, Jarrett leads the Oratorio Singers Chamber Chorus in performance at the annual Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC.

Jarrett serves as Director of Music, Chapel Organist and Choirmaster at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. Also at Boston University, his appointment includes adjunct faculty posts in both the School of Theology as a Lecturer in the Practice of Sacred Music and in the College of Fine Arts as Teaching Associate in Choral Conducting. As Director of Music at Marsh Chapel, Jarrett leads the Chapel Choir and Collegium in weekly services broadcast over the Internet and on National Public Radio. In addition to these liturgical responsibilities, the Chapel Choir and Collegium present a yearly Bach Cantata Series, performing these masterworks in their original liturgical context. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth, the 2008–09 season will survey the choral and organ works of this great composer, culminating in a performance of the rarely heard Lauda Sion. Recent seasons of Music at Marsh Chapel have included Bach’s Magnificat, Easter and Ascension Oratorios, Saint John Passion; Handel’s Saul and Solomon; the Fauré Requiem; Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri; and Mozart’s Mass in C Minor.

An accomplished pianist, Jarrett frequently serves as rehearsal pianist and assistant for Ann Howard Jones. He also accompanied rehearsals for the late Robert Shaw’s Boston appearances. A rehearsal pianist for the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop, Jarrett played rehearsals for Charles Dutoit. As a baritone, Jarrett has been a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, the Boston Bach Ensemble, and Schola Cantorum of Boston. He is also a proud alumnus of Furman University.