Welcome Aboard, Scott Williamson!

As our 50th anniversary season begins, the Rockbridge Choral Society is excited to welcome Scott Williamson, our new Associate Artistic Director for the Rockbridge Chorus and Chamber Singers.

From musical theatre and church music to opera and the classics, Dr. Williamson’s repertoire spans multiple musical disciplines. He is a Fulbright Scholar with a 2019 season spent on the faculty of West University in Romania, where he worked in Music and Theatre, International Relations, and at the Center for Trans-Disciplinary Research.

Scott’s performance career includes works of western music, including more than 100 premieres. As an internationally recognized tenor, the Times of London called his debut at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre “brilliant”. His performance work has been praised in the New York Times, Opera News, and The Washington Post.

Scott’s love of opera is no secret. Our audience will know him as a frequent soloist with our ensembles over the past two decades, and most recently as the judge in the Rockbridge Chorus’s spring/2025 performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. As General and Artistic Director of Opera Roanoke from 2010 - 2018, he created their Apprentice Artist Program and co-produced notable company premiers including the Flying Dutchman and South Pacific.

For many years, Williamson was the Music Director of Temple Emanuel in Roanoke, where he has also served on the board of the historic Grandin Theatre and as a guest curator in music and a Museum Studies Director at the Taubman Museum of Art. As a teacher and conductor, he has served on the faculties of Goshen College, Hollins University and Virginia Tech. He began his career at Washington and Lee University in 1996, where as visiting Assistant Professor of Music, he continues to teach, perform and conduct. Through it all, he is in consistent demand as a guest artist. As if that were not enough, his poetry has appeared in the Atlanta Review and the Tupelo Quarterly.

The singers are already having a fun year with Scott whose enthusiasm for the music he has chosen for them shows up at every rehearsal. Please join us on September 20 as we welcome Scott to the podium for our 50th anniversary season opener - the Rockbridge Chorus’s Fall Pops Concert.