About Me
John Kendall Bailey is Music Director, Principal Conductor and Chorus Master of Trinity Lyric Opera, Music Director and Conductor of Voices of Musica Sacra, Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Song Festival.
In 1994, Mr. Bailey founded the Berkeley Lyric Opera and served as its Music Director and Conductor until 2001. Since then he has been a guest conductor with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, American Philharmonic-Sonoma County, Diablo Symphony Orchestra, Oakland Youth Orchestra, and Oakland Ballet, and music director and conductor for productions with North Bay Opera, Pocket Opera, Mission City Opera, the Crowden School, Dominican University, Thick Description, Goat Hall Productions, Opera Frontier, Solo Opera, Shoebox Opera, and Golden State Theater Productions. Mr. Bailey has taught conducting at the University of California at Davis and Notre Dame de Namur University. Highlights of the upcoming 2009-2010 season including conducting La Traviata for West Bay Opera and a program of Samuel Barber's complete works for chorus with Voices of Musica Sacra.
As a choral director, Mr. Bailey served as Chorus Master of the Festival Opera of Walnut Creek from 2002-2006, Chorus Master for Opera San Jose in 2009, and has been guest conductor for the University of California-Berkeley Chamber Chorus, the University of California-Davis Chorus, Chamber Singers, and Alumni Chorus, and the Berkeley Broadway Singers.
Mr. Bailey is also a composer, and his works have been performed and commissioned in the Bay Area and abroad. He has enjoyed wearing other musical hats as a baritone, oboist, and pianist, and has performed with the San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland East Bay, Berkeley, Redding, Napa, Sacramento, and Prometheus symphonies, American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Midsummer Mozart and West Marin music festivals, San Francisco Bach Choir, Coro Hispano de San Francisco, Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Sacred and Profane, California Vocal Academy, San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, Masterworks Chorale of San Mateo, Baroque Arts Ensemble, San Francisco Korean Master Chorale, the Master Sinfonia, the Mark Morris and Merce Cunningham dance companies, Goat Hall Productions, Opera Piccola, the Berkeley, Golden Gate, and Oakland Lyric Opera companies, and many other groups. He has recorded for the Harmonia Mundi, Koch International, Pro Musica, Wildboar, Centaur, and Angelus Music labels.
Mr. Bailey has been a pre-performance lecturer for the Oakland East Bay Symphony, San Francisco Opera, American Bach Soloists and Festival Opera of Walnut Creek, a critic for the San Francisco Classical Voice, and a writer of real-time commentary for the Concert Companion.
What the critics have said about John Kendall Bailey:
JKB, music director & conductor:
"Beautifully performed by eight superb singers and a rich six-piece orchestra, under the expert direction of conductor John Kendall Bailey" -- Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle (Thick Description | David Conte: America Tropical, 2007)
"But the lion's share of credit goes to music director Bailey, who led the orchestra in a first-rate performance of the score. Under his direction, Vaughan Williams' music sounded heavenly." -- Georgia Rowe, Contra Costa Times (Trinity Lyric Opera | Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim's Progress, 2006)
"Music Director John Kendall Bailey was a sure hand throughout the evening, shaping his orchestra into something far beyond a mere pickup ensemble in most cases. His additional pre-performance work as choirmaster was also telling, as the chorus provided beautiful sonics and visuals throughout. If this is heaven, count me in." -- Mark Alburger, San Francisco Classical Voice (Trinity Lyric Opera | Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim's Progress, 2006)
"John Kendall Bailey conducted this score of agitated strings, pronounced brass, chordal piano, and harp accents with verve and intensity." -- James Keolker, San Francisco Classical Voice (North Bay Opera | Gian-Carlo Menotti: The Consul, 2005)
"There is also wonderful playing by the Oakland East Bay Symphony, under the baton of John Kendall Bailey -- on opening night -- a match of live music and dance that Oakland Ballet and its audiences deserve to enjoy throughout the season." -- Octavio Roca, San Francisco Chronicle (Oakland Ballet | Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, 1999)
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JKB, choral director
"...and the choral singing, led by John Kendall Bailey, sounded robust and well blended." -- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle (Festival Opera | Giuseppe Verdi: Un Ballo in Maschera, 2005)
"... and the chorus, led by John Kendall Bailey, provided the most tender and warmly blended choral singing I've heard from this company." -- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle (Festival Opera | Charles Gounod: Romeo et Juliette, 2004)
--Response from the audience:
"We were treated to a truly sublime program. I’m quite sure no program at Davies Hall could surpass the beauty of this program." - Letter to the editor, Berkeley Daily Planet (UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus Noon Concert, 2008)
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JKB, baritone:
I was moved to chills by Bailey's performance during the â€Agnus Dei,†especially at the section "Cordero de Dios que quitas los pecados del mundo" (Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world). His sound here was as centered and well tuned as it was expressive." -- Loretta Notareschi, San Francisco Classical Voice (Coro Hispano & Cantare con Vivo: Ariel Ramirez - Misa Criolla, 2005)
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JKB, writer for the Concert Companion:
"Concert Companion's proudest moment came during the finale of the Beethoven, which is built around a long and subtle joke about sonata form. The development section is unusually brisk and streamlined, while the coda is a hugely swollen appendage that threatens to overbalance the entire movement. Again and again, Beethoven promises to end the piece, only to extend it through some harmonic sleight of hand or piece of brusque wit. This is precisely the kind of joke that is lost on almost any modern listener, for whom the expectations of sonata form are so much textbook arcana. And to watch it explicated as it unfolded, in John Kendall Bailey's gracious and informative notes, was a marvel." -- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle (Concert Companion debut at Oakland East Bay Symphony, 2005)
