Edward Maclary became Director of Choral Activities at the University of Maryland School of Music in September 2000. He was named Professor of Music in 2006. Choirs under his direction have toured throughout the United States and Canada and have sung by invitation at the Music Educators National Conference and the American Choral Directors Association. In addition to leading the graduate studies program in choral conducting, Prof. Maclary conducts the Maryland Chorus and the University Chorale, two of the UM School of Music's five full-time choral ensembles. Regarded as an outstanding clinician and teacher, Maclary maintains an active schedule as guest conductor for choral festivals and honors choirs throughout the country. He has also served as chorus master for distinguished conductors such as Robert Shaw, Robert Spano, Louis Lane and Bobby McFerrin.

He received his doctoral degree in conducting in 1985 from Indiana University after having been awarded a graduate degree in musicology from Boston University. In the following years he worked closely on many projects with Robert Shaw and also studied and collaborated with Helmuth Rilling, Margaret Hillis and Robert Page.

Nicole Aldrich is a doctoral fellow in choral conducting at the University of Maryland, where she studies with Edward Maclary, Director of Choral Activities and James Ross, Director of Orchestral Activities. Before coming to the University of Maryland, she was a member of the music faculty at the University of Delaware, where she was the conductor of the school's premier women's ensemble, University Singers. In addition to University Singers, which she directed from 2000 to 2007, she taught undergraduate and graduate conducting and all levels of class piano. She also served on the applied voice faculty of the University of Delaware for two years. Ms. Aldrich has directed district and regional honor choirs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and in 2007 directed the Delaware All State Women's choir. She has presented workshops on vocal health, voice training in the choral rehearsal, and choral intonation at state and regional conferences.

Ms. Aldrich graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Wesleyan College and went on to earn a master's degree in conducting from Northwestern University, where she was the recipient of the Frederick Swann Scholarship. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and recently completed a two-year term as president of the Delaware chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenbach, Germany, into a family renowned in the area for its musical talent. For generations, members of the Bach family had held positions as organists, town instrumentalists, or cantors; Bach's father Johann Ambrosius Bach was court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach. Bach's father taught him to play the violin and harpsichord and his uncle, the famous organist Johann Christoph Bach, initiated him into the art of organ playing.

As a young boy, Bach had an uncommonly beautiful soprano voice, which led him to a position in the choir of the Michaelis monastery at Lüneburg, where he began what was to become one of the most illustrious musical careers of his, or any, time. As the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music describes his contributions: He opened up new dimensions in virtually every department of creative work to which he turned, in format, musical quality and technical demands. ...his chorale harmonizations and fugal works were soon adopted as models for new generations of musicians.

Bach scholar Christoph Wolff describes Bach's B Minor Mass as "a summary of his writing for voice, not only in its variety of styles, compositional devices, and range of sonorities, but also in its high level of technical polish...Bach's mighty setting preserved the musical and artistic creed of its creator for posterity."

Samuel Barber is most popularly known for the instrumental "Adagio for Strings" (the second movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11), but his compositions for voice are also a significant part of his work. Indeed, Barber's two Pulitzer prizes neatly encompass both musical realms: He won the prize in 1958 for the opera Vanessa (text by Gian Carlo Menotti) and in 1963 for the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. As the website singers.com describes Barber's music, "One of the most significant and memorable qualities of his work is his ability to write sustained and flowing melodies. Combined with an undoubted skill in orchestration this lyricism produces an intense, emotional strength in his writing which was sustained throughout his career."

Agnus Dei is a vocal setting of "Adagio for Strings," which the composer transcribed in 1967 for eight-part choir.

American composer and educator Adolphus Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles, including both instrumental and vocal genres. Dr. Hailstork's works have been performed by such prestigious ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic, and his compositions for voice have become staples of the choral repertoire. In a preface to a 2005 broadcast interview with Dr. Hailstork on NPR affiliate WILL-FM, journalist Roger Cooper describes his music as "lyrical and very singable," which he says the composer attributes to his childhood experience singing with his mother around the house.

In his long and extensive career, Ralph Vaughan Williams composed music notable for its power, nobility and expressiveness – "the essence of Englishness" (Ralph Vaughan Williams Society).

Williams' body of work includes symphonies; orchestral works; scores for film, radio and the stage; chamber music; and choral works. His extensive output of choral compositions includes settings of Bible passages, selections from folk sources and poems by Shakespeare, Blake, Whitman, Tennyson, Rosetti, Shelley and many other literary notables. "O Clap Your Hands" was composed in 1920 as a setting of words from Psalm 97.