Dr. Patrick Gardner

     Patrick Gardner’s performances have been acclaimed by New York audiences, critics, and an international roster of composers including Jennifer Higdon, Tarik O’Regan, William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, Lew Spratlan, John Harbison, and Lou Harrison. Now in his 26th season as director of Riverside Choral Society (RCS), Dr. Gardner is also the Director of Choral Activities at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he conducts the Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir and the Rutgers University Glee Club, and directs the graduate program in Choral Conducting. In the spring of 2015, he was named Distinguished Professor of Music- the only music professor at Rutgers to currently hiold that academic rank. In the past five years, Gardner has conducted Lou Harrison’s Suite for Violin and Gamelan and La Koro Sutro at Bar College’s Fisher Center for the Arts, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, Bach[s B-minor Mass and Christmas Oratorio at Lincoln Center with Riverside Choral Society; prepared RCS for a performance of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with the Mark Morris Dance Group for the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center, and conducted the St. Cecelia Chorus in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and B-minor Mass at Carnegie Hall. Dr. Gardner has prepared the women of RCS for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 at Avery Fisher Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev.

     Dr. Gardner has conducted nearly 100 major works with orchestra since his arrival in New York in 1990, from Mozart’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall to Stravinsky’s Cantata at Symphony Space. He has conducted RCS in its Lincoln Center performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Brahms Requiem, the Verdi Requiem, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Carmina Burana and Mozart’s C-minor mass.

      In recent orchestral performanced at Rutgers and with the RCS orchestra,Dr. Gardner has conducted numerous major symphonic work, including Brahms’ Second Symphony, Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, Avro Pärt’s Canticum in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral, as well as piano concerti of Mozart, Shostakovich and others. He recently conducted the Rutgers University Glee Club in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, and has prepared that ensemble for a performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. He was chorus master for the Internationally acclaimed Robert Allman production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress  at the Opéra de Lille in France and has recently lectured and presented master classes in the Netherlands, Italy and Taiwan. Dr. Gardner served on the 2011 grants panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and has recorded for the Naxos, Albany, Etherreal and Folkways labels.