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About NJGMC

Artistic Staff:

Steven A. Russell – Artistic Director and Conductor

Steven A. Russell is the Artistic Director of The New Jersey Gay Men's Chorus and the Director of Sacred Music at St. Thomas More Church in Manalapan, New Jersey. He has directed the Rutgers University Queens Chorale and the Shrewsbury Chorale. Steven taught music in public and parochial schools for several years, and directed the music at churches in Colts Neck, Keyport, Atlantic Highlands, Navesink, and Edison, New Jersey.

He studied music at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, singing with Paul Christiansen and the Concordia Choir, and finished his Bachelor of Music in Music Education degree magna cum laude at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, singing with Joseph Flummerfelt and the Westminster Choir throughout the United States and at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He earned a Master of Music in Choral Conducting at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, studying with Richard Westenburg.

Steven is half of the piano duo, Polymania, performing throughout New Jersey and in the Bahamas. Steven has studied conducting with Frauke Hasemann, Allan Crowell and Richard Westenburg, piano with Harold Zabrack, organ with David Drinkwater, voice with Marvin Keenze, Bill Reed at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City and Daniel Shigo of the New York City Opera, and tap with Dan Peterson at the Red Bank Dance Academy. He is the chair of the Repertoire and Standards Committee for Community Choruses for the New Jersey American Choral Directors Association, and the president of the newly formed New Jersey Choral Consortium.

Steven grew up in Avon Lake, Ohio, and lives with his husband, Joe, in Matawan, New Jersey.

David Hughes – Accompanist

David Hughes has performed at the Kennedy Center, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw and the Carmel (CA) Music Society’s subscription series. Recent engagements also include a solo recital of American works at the USA Foundation of the Cité Universitaires in Paris. He can also be heard playing four different keyboard instruments on John Zorn’s recently recorded violin concerto, “Contes de Fées,” on the Tzadik label.

He has a strong interest in contemporary music and received third prize in the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition—one of the world’s premier competitions for modern music—as a member of Outer Banks Duo with saxophonist Stacy Wilson. At the 2010 Orléans competition for solo piano he presented a work that he commissioned--"Lacuna", by composer Adam Roberts--that won the Prix Chevillon-Bonnaud for the best new composition. He is also a past recipient of a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center.

David currently resides in Philadelphia where he teaches and works as a freelance musician. He has been a pianist and coach for a world premiere opera, “Decameron,” as well as a new oratorio, Jonathan Leshnoff’s “Hope." The latter premiered at the Kimmel Center in 2011 as part of the PIFA festival. In 2010 he received his doctoral degree in piano performance from Indiana University, studying with Arnaldo Cohen and Emile Naoumoff.