NJ Elementary and Junior High All-State Choir Festival
Our Clinicians
The 2024 Audition Date has passed. Please check back in September for the 2025 Audition information.
MARY BIDDLECOMBE
Mary Biddlecombe is Director of the Vanderbilt Blair Academy, and the Artistic Director of Vanderbilt Youth Choirs where she oversees six graded youth choirs. In addition to her work with the Blair Academy, she teaches collegiate courses in music education and choral literature and conducts the Vanderbilt University Singers.
Biddlecombe is a specialist in children’s voices, particularly middle school and secondary choral settings. She is in demand as an adjudicator and clinician presenting numerous interest sessions for music educators. She has conducted all-state choruses for Alabama, Florida, and Georgia as well as regional honor choirs in ten states. In 2022 she served as co-conductor of the UCTB Honor Choir for the Southern Region American Choral Directors Association Conference as well as the Children’s Choir Clinician for the Montreat Music & Worship Conference. In 2024, Biddlecombe will conduct the Children’s Honor Choir for the Southwest Region ACDA Conference and all-state choirs in California, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey and North Carolina. Choirs under her direction have performed for conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and have toured nationally and internationally. Vanderbilt Youth Choirs also frequently collaborate with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra with recent projects including two Mahler symphonies, John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, Britten’s War Requiem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana in Prague, CZ with the Nashville Symphony Chorus.
Biddlecombe Mary is a native of Syracuse NY and holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Music Education from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. Mary makes her home in Nashville with her husband Dr. Tucker Biddlecombe, Director of Choral Activities at Vanderbilt.
JOHN WILSON
John Wilson has served as the choral director at Bridgewater-Raritan High School for seventeen years. His choirs perform frequently, and were most recently featured at the 2020 ACDA Eastern Division Conference in Rochester, NY. Dr. Wilson’s ensembles have performed at major venues in the New York/New Jersey area under the direction of Ryan Brandau, James Jordan, Amanda Quist, Alan Raines, Lee Nelson, and Andrew Megill, a notable example being a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in March of 2018 at Princeton University Chapel. John served as an Associate Director at the Princeton Girlchoir organization between 2015-2018, where he conducted the Cantores ensemble. This ensemble was featured in a recording of Steven Sametz’s A Child’s Requiem in 2015 which was led by the composer. From 2014-2019, Dr. Wilson served as a faculty member at the Summer High School Vocal Institute faculty at Westminster Choir College, where he conducted the Men’s Ensemble and taught a primer in conducting. John conducted the Georgia All-State Middle Treble chorus in 2023, the Virginia All-State Middle School Treble chorus in 2018, and the CJMEA Region Treble Chorus in 2019. Dr. Wilson has taught undergraduate courses in conducting and music education at Rutgers University, where he earned his masters and doctorate degrees in choral conducting under the guidance of Dr. Patrick Gardner. During 2020-2021, Dr. Wilson had the privilege of leading the Rutgers University Choir. He is the most recent past-president of the New Jersey chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, and coordinated the summer conference in 2023.
ROSEMARY NAGY
