Amy Kaiser has spent more than 30 years inspiring singers to perform at the highest professional level, and in the process she has become one of the country’s relatively few well-known women conductors. Currently director of the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus, and the only woman in the country to hold this position with a major orchestra, Kaiser attributes her love of conducting to her Smith mentor, former Professor of Music Iva Dee Hiatt.

After receiving a master’s in musicology at Columbia University and studying voice for several years, Kaiser began conducting college choruses, first at Smith, then at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. There were almost no women conducting professional instrumental ensembles at the time, but with the support of the women’s movement, Kaiser expanded her horizons and started conducting opera and orchestras as well as choruses.

Moving to New York City in 1978, she began an 18-year freelance-conducting career that included dozens of performances at Lincoln Center as music director of The Dessoff Choirs (twelve seasons) and conductor for the Metropolitan Opera Guild (more than 50 performances). She was principal conductor for the New York Chamber Symphony’s School Concert Series and conducted regularly for the 92nd Street Y’s acclaimed Schubertiade. She led more than 25 operas (including 8 contemporary premiers), dozens of world premieres – both operatic and choral – and prepared choruses for the New York Philharmonic, Mostly Mozart Festival and Ravinia Festival. For her many choral performances, which involved thousands of professional and volunteer singers, she has received critical acclaim. She has trained gifted young singers and choral conductors as a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music.

Since moving to St. Louis in 1995, Kaiser has conducted the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in Handel’s Messiah, Schubert’s Mass in E flat, Vivaldi’s Gloria, and sacred works by Haydn and Mozart as well as Young People’s Concerts. She has made eight appearances as guest conductor for the Berkshire Choral Festival in Sheffield, MA, Santa Fe and at Canterbury Cathedral in England.

A frequent collaborator with Professor Peter Schickele on his annual PDQ Bach concerts at Carnegie Hall, Amy made her Carnegie Hall debut conducting PDQ’s Consort of Choral Christmas Carols. Recently, she led master classes in choral conducting at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, served as faculty for a conducting workshop with Chorus America and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. An active guest speaker, she teaches monthly classes for adults in symphonic and operatic repertoire and presents PreConcert Perspectives at Powell Symphony Hall.