Rachel Samet
Director of Choral Studies
Rachel Samet is Assistant Professor of Music at UH-Manoa, where she conducts the University Chorus, Concert Choir, and Chamber Singers. Before coming to Hawaii, Ms. Samet conducted choirs and taught music theory, choral pedagogy, and piano classes at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Boston University. In addition to her university teaching, she has directed high school, middle school, and community-based choirs. Equally at home in the world of theater, Ms. Samet has conducted opera and numerous musical theater productions, most recently Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors for the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change! for The Opera House at Boothbay Harbor in Maine.
While at the University of Colorado, Ms. Samet conducted the Collegiate Chorale and the University Women's Chorus. She had the honor of preparing the Collegiate Chorale to perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem under the baton of Marin Alsop at Denver's Boettcher Concert Hall. In addition, Ms. Samet conducted the Collegiate Chorale at the American Choral Directors Association's Colorado Collegiate Choral Festival, and at the American Music Research Center's International Musicological Symposium: Nadia Boulanger and American Music.
Ms. Samet is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting and Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from Oberlin College, where she studied piano with Robert McDonald. Her conducting teachers include Lawrence Kaptein, Joan Catoni Conlon, Ann Howard Jones, Daniel Moe and David Hoose.