Sanford Dole is Artistic Director of Cantabile Chorale, a 70-voice community choir with branches in Palo Alto and Berkeley, and Music Director of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. He is also a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s all-professional Chorale. Active in the Bay Area as a conductor, singer and composer for his entire adult life, Mr. Dole had performed with, and had his compositions performed by, many of the area’s leading ensembles.

He was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for 23 seasons, and was that group’s Assistant Director from 1987-97. A founding member of the male vocal ensemble, Chanticleer, his arrangements have often been performed by the renown 12-man chorus as well as his commissioned work, I Am With You, set to a poem by Walt Whitman.

Mr. Dole received his Bachelor and Masters degrees, in composition and conducting respectively, from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

His conducting credits include such major works as Handel’s Messiah, and Bach’s B Minor Mass and St. Matthew Passion, as well as many other choral and chamber ensemble concerts. In addition, he has prepared choruses for performances with the California Symphony and the Berkeley Symphony.

His voice can be heard in solos on recordings with Chanticleer and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, and his compositions appear on CD’s produced by Cantabile Chorale and St. Gregory’s Choir.

In addition to many anthems and shorter works composed for these groups, he is at work on an opera, El Caballero, based on a story by O. Henry, with a libretto by Brad Erickson.

In 1991 he founded the Sanford Dole Ensemble. Dedicated to presenting new and rarely performed gems for vocal/instrumental ensemble, this group has presented programs of new works by various composers’ collectives as well as classics from the choral genre, varying in size to fit the needs of the repertoire.