Mark Bailey (conductor)

Mark Bailey in 2012

Mark Bailey (born 1962) is an American conductor and baroque violist. He is the founder and artistic director of the American Baroque Orchestra, based in New Haven, Connecticut. Bailey specializes in Slavic music of the 17th and 18th centuries, in addition to baroque, classical, and early romantic repertoire, and is the current director of the Yale Russian Chorus. Bailey frequently guest conducts ensembles such as the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Cappella Romana, The Portland Baroque Orchestra and Pro Coro Canada. He often gives presentations on Slavic baroque music, and has been a principal guest speaker for the Great Performers series and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Born and raised outside Rochester, New York, Bailey began his musical studies in viola and piano at an early age, and started singing through his involvement in the Eastman Children's Chorus. While concentrating in vocal performance and piano as an undergraduate, he began to study conducting with David Effron. As a graduate student he changed his focus to this field, studying conducting (and Liturgy and Russian) at Yale. Later he continued his conducting studies with Harold Farberman. Upon graduation Bailey worked as an assistant conductor while leaning toward Russian romantic and 20th century repertoire, opera, and Orthodox sacred music. In the 1990s he met baroque violinist Jaap Schröder, and began to study period performance practice.

In 2012 Bailey founded the American Baroque Orchestra, primarily drawing on musicians from Boston, Hartford, New Haven, and New York. Bailey's former conducting positions have included artistic and music director of the New Haven Oratorio Choir and Orchestra, the Westchester Concert Singers, The New England Benefit Orchestra, and The Festival Chamber Orchestra at Yale. He was the assistant conductor of the Eastman Philharmonia, the opera department at the Eastman School of Music, and for the Heidelberg Castle Opera Festival in Heidelberg, Germany.

Bailey has appeared a baroque violist with the American Baroque Orchestra, the Arcadia Players, Northampton, Massachusetts, The Sebastian Players in Connecticut, and Schola Cantorum at Yale University. His compositions and arrangements have been performed by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, which commissioned several works from Mr. Bailey for their 2011-2012 season opener, and other works of his have premiered at Lincoln Center, Yale University, Boston’s Emmanuel Church, and throughout the United States, as well as at St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia. Approximately forty of his compositions have been published.

Bailey has won praise for his leadership of the Yale Russian chorus. His first recording with the YRC in 1996 was placed on The New York Times critics’ choice list and described as a must-have recording by National Public Radio’s Performance Today. From 1992 to 2008, Bailey served on the faculty of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York, where he taught composition, analysis, choral leadership, and Church Slavonic. He also served on the conducting staff for the chapel choirs, and he founded the Composers Seminar at St. Vladimir’s in 2007 and 2008. Bailey continues to teach and conduct Orthodox sacred music at various conferences and seminars throughout North America. He teaches conducting and performance practice to a select number of students, and is a Fellow at Davenport College, Yale University.

Bailey is currently the interim curator for the collection of Historical Sound Recordings at Yale University. Outside of music, Mr. Bailey is extensively involved in animal welfare and, in 2012, was appointed by the mayor of the City of New Haven, Connecticut, as a humane commissioner.

External links

• Yale Russian Chorus Official Website
• American Baroque Orchestra Official Website