CMAC Directors, Past and Present.

Burke Morton studied Music at the University of Chicago in the early 1990s where he found his passion: conducting. While an undergraduate, he studied with Bruce Tammen (who would, more than a decade later, become CMAC’s founding director), and composition with Andrew Imbrie, John Eaton, and Easley Blackwood. He went on to study with such luminaries as William Browning and Eileen Deneen, as well as conduct the extraordinary community choir Coro da Camera Chicago, and later the Virginia Glee Club at UVA; produce recordings for Cedille Records (the Chicago Classical Recordings Foundation); and hold music director positions for churches in Illinois and Virginia. After a decade of conducting full time, he took a break to raise two wonderful children (though he still conducted on an ad hoc basis), and carved out a successful second career as a sommelier, wine merchant, and occasional restaurant manager, mostly in Cincinnati. During the early days of COVID, of all times, he returned to choral conducting, when it was the safest thing anyone could have done, with CMAC: The University of Chicago Glee Club.

Bruce Tammen, founding director of Chicago Chorale and CMAC: The University of Chicago Glee Club, holds degrees from Luther College, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago. He has taught voice and directed choirs at Luther College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia, and is the 2012 recipient of the Weston Noble Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Vocal Music. Tammen studied extensively in France with Dalton Baldwin and Gerard Souzay, and several years with Max Van Egmond at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, and participated in master classes in Sweden and Norway. He has sung with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, Chicago's Contemporary Chamber Players, the Oregon Bach Festival, and Les Heures Musicales in Biot, France. He performed several seasons under Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival, and with the Robert Shaw Choral Institute, in Souillac, France. Tammen is baritone soloist on the Telarc/Shaw compact discs Appear and Inspire and Liebeslieder Waltzes. Choirs under his direction have toured extensively in France, Spain, Finland, and the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Burke Morton (2020-Present)

Bruce Tammen (2005-2019)

Will Myers (2019-2020)

Will Myers (AB 2018) was interim director of CMAC the second year after his graduation, near the beginning of his career as a choral conductor. He was a four-year member of the Glee Club, serving on the executive board and as music chair.