William O. Baker has earned a reputation as an entrepreneurial conductor and creator of choral organizations. He founded the DeKalb Choral Guild in 1978 at the age of 19. By the age of 21 he had conducted Brahms’ German Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Schubert’s Mass in G, and Handel’s Messiah with professional orchestras, launching a career of ambitious artistic leadership that has now extended over thirty-five years. In the last five years alone he has conducted the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor of Bach, and the Sacred Service of Ernest Bloch, becoming at the time of the performances the only Kansas City-based conductor to lead the works in over a quarter-century.
Baker created the Atlanta-based William Baker Festival Singers, originally called “Gwinnett” Festival Singers, in 1985, and established the William Baker Choral Foundation in 1990. In 1998 the conductor moved his home to the Kansas City area and created the Kansas City ensemble of the Festival Singers. Now the Choral Foundation sponsors ten performing ensembles based in three states and involving over 500 registrants. His choirs have performed for numerous conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, and the American Guild of Organists, in addition to the 1982 World’s Fair and music festivals in the United States and Great Britain, most notably annual appearances at Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival since 1989. He has led the William Baker Festival Singers in the production of 19 nationally released recordings, and in television and radio appearances across the nation, including The First Art, The Sounds of Majesty and National Public Radio’s Performance Today.
No stranger to the orchestral podium, William Baker created The Mountain Park Wind Symphony in 1994 and the Kansas City Wind Symphony in 1998. Recent orchestral performances have included Vivaldi: The Seasons, Sibelius Finlandia, Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, Bizet: Suite L’Alesienne, and the Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 9. Choral/orchestral collaborations have included projects with members of the Kansas City Symphony, the Kazanetti Quartet, the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, the Baton Rouge Symphony, the Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra, and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He is Founder and Music Director of the Orchestra of the American Heartland.
Dr. Baker served as Minister of Music for a number of significant Lutheran, Presbyterian and United Methodist congregations across the South and the Midwest. Major appointments have included the historic Grace United Methodist Church in Midtown Atlanta and The Village Church in suburban Kansas City, the nation’s second largest Presbyterian congregation. He is the author of Hearts & Hands & Voices: Weekly Reflections on Music and the Church, published by Amber Waves Music Publishing.
An Atlanta native, Dr. Baker studied voice and choral conducting at Mercer University and the University of Georgia before culminating his formal education at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago where he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting. He holds the position of Associate Professor of Music at the Conservatory where he teaches applied conducting, choral literature and choral methods. The Baker family makes their home in northeastern Kansas. Dr. Baker commutes weekly to serve conducting responsibilities in Georgia, Kansas and Missouri. His accomplishments have been recognized in his native state through proclamations by two Georgia Governors, Joe Frank Harris and Sonny Purdue, and United States Congressman Phil Gingrey. He will be honored for his lifetime contributions to the cultural life of the Atlanta area by the Pro-Mozart Society of Atlanta on December 1, 2012.
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