Stephen Spinelli

Stephen Spinelli is an associate professor of choral studies at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and music director of the Back Bay Chorale. He previously served as assistant director of choral programs at Cornell University and held visiting and adjunct appointments at Thomas Jefferson University, Moravian College, Villanova University, and Syracuse University. As a tenor with the Crossing, Spinelli appeared on the Grammy Award–winning recording of Gavin Bryars’s The Fifth Century. He has also performed with Roomful of Teeth and assisted in producing the ensemble’s Grammy Award–winning debut album, which included Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Partita for Eight Voices. As a guest conductor, he has particularly valued his work with the Maui Chamber Orchestra and Chorus.

Spinelli is a cofounder of ONEcomposer, a nonprofit organization devoted to the research, publication, performance, and recording of music by historically excluded composers. He curated and edited Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, featuring soprano Karen Slack and pianist Michelle Cann, and served as the album’s coproducer and liner notes author. The recording received the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Spinelli was a Beinecke Library Research Fellow at Yale University, where he investigated the creative partnership between Langston Hughes and Margaret Bonds. He was also an Ecker Fellow with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, supporting his research into “othering” in the writing and recording of music history.