Donald Nally

Donald Nally (born December 27, 1960) is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music.

He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia.

He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.

Nally has been chorus master of Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.

Nally’s first professional chamber choir was The Bridge Ensemble which sang concerts 1996-1997; though it failed financially, it established a significant presence in Philadelphia, receiving a great amount of critical attention and laying the groundwork for the success of The Crossing.

From 1998 to 2002, he was Artistic Director of the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, during which time the chorus received Chorus America’s 2002 Margaret Hillis National Award for Excellence and was chosen as “The Best of Philadelphia” by Philadelphia Magazine.

At the end of 2002, Nally left Philadelphia and moved to Wales to become the chorus master at Welsh National Opera.

The ensemble began in 2005 when Nally and a group of friends sang an informal concert together.

In 2006, Nally returned to the United States to become the chorus master for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Nally has guest conducted the Swedish Radio Choir, the Latvian State Choir, the Grant Park Symphony Chorus, and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale; he has prepared choirs for the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra (including the world premiere of Hannibal’s One Heart Beating), the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Spoleto USA.

Nally collaborates often on living-art installations with the artists Allora & Calzadilla, with scores by David Lang, which have been staged in Frankfurt, Osaka, Edmonton, Cleveland, Córdoba, London, Philadelphia, and Houston.

He was music director for Lang's The Mile-Long Opera, overseeing a thousand singers on The High Line in Manhattan.

It has received numerous awards, including the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming (2009, 2011 & 2017), the American Composers Forum 2017 Champion of New Music Award, the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, and the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

At the end of the 2010-11 season, Nally left Lyric Opera of Chicago and moved back to Philadelphia to focus on his Philadelphia ensemble, The Crossing, which specializes in contemporary works.

In September 2012, Nally joined the faculty of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois as a tenured professor and director of choral organizations.

He was appointed following the retirement of longtime professor Dr. Robert A. Harris, who held the position for the 35 years previous to Nally's appointment.

Upon arriving in Evanston in the fall of 2012 Nally founded the chamber choir BCE, a premier group of 26 singers dedicated to performing choral music of the 21st century and drawing relationships to its polyphonic roots in early music – primarily that of the Renaissance.

The ensemble has sung several times on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW series and appeared at both of Chicago's Ear Taxi festivals.

In 2013, Nally rehearsed Howard Hanson's Song of Democracy, which sets texts from various poems of Walt Whitman.

An African American student objected to performing the work because he claimed Whitman was racist.

Nally told the student he would receive a failing grade if he did not perform the work.

The student claimed that a failing grade would have led to the loss of his scholarship.

He has been nominated seven times for the Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, winning in 2018, 2019, and 2023.

He has won numerous awards and is recognized as one of the leading commissioners of new music in the United States.

Nally was born in Hilltown, Pennsylvania, and educated at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (BM, music education), Westminster Choir College (MM, choral conducting), and the University of Illinois (DMA, choral conducting).

He has been Artist in Residence at Washington and Lee University and Shorter University, has been on the faculty of the University of Illinois, and has been guest lecturer at Indiana University and the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.