Tom Jaber
Artistic and Music Director
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Tom Jaber is Professor of Music at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and Music Director of the Rice University Chorale. For the past thirty years, he has coached singers, collaborated as pianist, organist, and harpsichordist in countless recitals with both faculty colleagues
and students, conducted chorus and orchestra concerts, and several operatic productions at Rice University and around the country.
Mr. Jaber has been the Artistic and Music Director of the esteemed Houston Masterworks Chorus for the past six years. With that ensemble he has led concerts with music from the standard large choral ensemble repertoire. He has also led the group on a highly successful concert tour of Italy in the summer of 2016. Additionally, Tom Jaber is currently the Director of Music and Organist
of Houston’s St. Anne Catholic Community, one of the largest and most active Parishes in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
Mr. Jaber has had a long association with the Amalfi Coast Music Festival
as vocal coach and conductor. He regularly works as an audition pianist for the San Francisco Opera Center Merola Program, the Metropolitan Opera,
as well as the Santa Fe Opera. He has also worked as principal coach in the Chautauqua Opera (1992), the Houston Grand Opera (Tosca, Porgy and Bess, Lucia di Lammermoor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and the Opera Company of Philadelphia (1979–88, and including the first two of the Luciano Pavarotti International Competitions).
Mr. Jaber is an honor graduate of Arkansas State University, Indiana University and the world-renowned Curtis Institute of Music where he was a member of the faculty from 1976-88. In addition, he was conductor and vocal coach at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts from 1977–86, and was Music Director of the Temple University Opera Theater from 1986–88.
As Director of Music and Organist at Houston’s Chapelwood United Methodist Church for twenty-five years (1989–2013), he led Chapelwood’s Chancel Choir in seven international concert tours, and played for thousands of services of worship throughout his tenure at Chapelwood and elsewhere over a very long career as a church musician. Mr. Jaber was also the Organist-Choirmaster of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1977–88. There he led a professional chorus of singers, and was heard regularly as organ recitalist on the magnificent Alexander McCurdy Organ.
