Biography





Dr. William O. Baker, Music Director

Dr. William Baker, Founder and Music Director, is a native of Atlanta. His formal education included studies in voice and conducting at Mercer University in Atlanta and the University of Georgia, culminating in the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Beginning with his 1977 appointment as Minister of Music for the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, he has served large Presbyterian, Lutheran and United Methodist congregations in the South and Midwest.

He now serves as Minister of Music for Grace United Methodist Church in Atlanta. He is the founder of the DeKalb Choral Guild, the Kansas City Wind Symphony, and the former Gwinnett Festival Singers. Through the Choral Foundation he is active throughout the nation as a guest conductor and clinician, with appearances from Virginia to Washington, and from South Dakota to Texas.

His choruses have produced fourteen nationally marketed recordings, and appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including The Sound of Majesty, The First Art, Atlanta Music Scene, The Protestant Hour, and National Public Radio's Performance Today. Performances have included headline appearances at the Bristol (England) International Music Festival, the 1982 World's Fair, the Canterbury Choral Series, the DeKalb International Choral Festival, and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and concerts in venues as diverse and magnificent as Atlanta's Spivey Hall, Birmingham England's Divinity Chapel, Chicago's St. James Cathedral, and New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral.

Dr. Baker is married to Festival Singer Laura René Baker, and is the father of three young children: John, Marguerite, and Zachary. He resides in Prairie Village, Kansas, and Snellville, Georgia.