Linda L. Tedford

Choral conducting and literature, vocal and choral techniques and methods

• B. M., Vocal Performance, Covenant College
• M. M., Choral Conducting, Temple University

• Choral conducting
• Concert Choir
• Chamber Singers
• Choral Arts Society
• Applied Conducting

Linda L. Tedford, Director of Choral Activities, conducts the Concert Choir, the Chamber Singers, and the Messiah College Choral Arts Society. She also teaches voice and graduate and undergraduate-level conducting. Ms. Tedford is also the Founder, Artistic Director, and Conductor of the award-winning Susquehanna Chorale, established in 1981 and Ensemble-in- Residence at Messiah College. She is responsible for the creation of the Chorale’s Educational Outreach program, which reaches hundreds of local student singers annually. Choirs under her leadership have performed at regional and state conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA); at Chautauqua Institution in New York, for the Legislature and Governor of Pennsylvania; and in several European venues. Her work is featured on over twenty professionally produced CDs, and her choirs appear regularly with the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra. In 1994 Ms. Tedford and the Susquehanna Chorale received Chorus America’s highest lifetime award, The Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence. Ms. Tedford is the 2011 recipient of ACDA-PA’s Elaine Brown Award for Choral Excellence for outstanding lifelong work in the choral art, and the 2013 recipient of Theater Harrisburg’s Award for Distinguished Service in the Capital Region.

Ms. Tedford holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Temple University, where she studied with internationally renowned conductor Robert Page. She pursued additional study at Westminster Choir College, as well as with prominent conductors such as Robert Shaw, Gregg Smith, and Dale Warland, and with voice teachers Robert Grooters and Thomas Houser. As a member of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, she has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of such conductors as Eugene Ormandy, Ricardo Muti, and Claudio Abbado. She has served as a member of the Choral/Opera Panel for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and she has been the Community Choruses Repertoire and Standards Committee Chairperson for ACDA in Pennsylvania and in the Eastern Division. She is an active member of Chorus America, the American Choral Directors Association, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and the National Association for Music Education. Ms Tedford is a frequent guest conductor, clinician and consultant.

Messiah College Concert Choir:

• How Can I Keep from Singing
• Look to This Day
• Worthy to be Praised
• I Thank You God
• In Remembrance
• Like A River
• Anticipation
• Arise, Shine!
• Music Down in My Soul

Susquehanna Chorale:

• A Susquehanna Christmas
• Heritage
• Wondrous Love
• American Treasures
• Susquehanna Christmas II
• Sojourn
• Sing Me to Heaven

Works commissioned/premiered:

• Madrigals of Spring, Richard Wargo
• Theta’s Musings, Robert Page
• Look to this Day, C. Thomas Schwalm
• Mirabile Mysterium, Fred Thayer
• When in Our Music, God is Glorified, C. Thomas Schwalm
• The Glory and the Dream, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett
• A Litany of Reconciliation, C. Thomas Schwalm
• So Say the Snowdrops, Fred Thayer
• When Christ was Born of Mary Free, Donald McCullough
• Star in the East, Richard Roberson
• Shine the Heavenly Light, Rollo Dilworth
• A Chautauqua Requiem, Bob Chilcott