BIOS

Dr. William Reber is Director of Choirs and Staff Pianist at MUW. He is Professor Emeritus of Opera and Music Theatre at Arizona State University where he was on the faculty for 24 years and served as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Lyric Opera Theatre.  Former Director of the 17th Air Force Men’s Chorus in Germany, he was head of the vocal coaching program for the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria (1993-2004), and was Music Director of the German Opera Experience/German Singer Summer in Freiberg, Germany (2008-2017). He was vocal coach, collaborative pianist and conductor for the Mittelsächsiches Theater in Germany. In the summer of 2019, joined the faculty of Spotlight on Opera as conductor and collaborative pianist and was appointed Music Director in 2020.

Dr. Reber has been Music Director/Conductor for more than 150 productions of operas and musicals and has been conductor of the Corpus Christi (TX) ballet for 37 years. As a collaborative pianist, he has performed recitals with singers and instrumentalists in Germany, Austria, Macedonia and throughout the United States. He is the pianist and music director for the annual AIDS Quilt Songbook benefit performances in Phoenix, AZ. Dr. Reber earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Opera and Conducting at The University of Texas at Austin under Walter Ducloux.

Dr. Susan Hurley, soprano, has performed in Europe and the United States in repertoire that ranges from opera and musical theatre to concert and recital literature. A prizewinner at the 2002 Meistersinger competition in Graz, Austria, she has sung 25 principal operatic roles and soloed with orchestras in Germany and Austria as well as throughout the U.S.

She is the founding Artistic Director of Phoenix Arizona’s annual AIDS Quilt Songbook concert series. Later this month, she will present her ninth annual AIDS Quilt Songbook benefit concert in Phoenix. The concert launches a week of World AIDS Day events and raises funds for Arizona HIV/AIDS service organizations. Dr. Hurley has commissioned several new songs, with texts by long-term HIV survivors, which have premiered on the Phoenix concerts. She has presented lecture recitals, masterclasses, and talks on the literature comprising the AIDS Quilt Songbook for Southern Regional NATS, the Mississippi Music Teachers Association, at universities, and most recently, this past August at the tenth International Congress of Voice Teachers (ICVT) in Vienna, Austria.

She has given presentations on the theories of Alfred Tomatis, founder of audio-psycho-phonology, at ICVT Stockholm (2017), NATS, and the Mississippi Music Teachers Association. She authored the chapter on Tomatis listening in the book So You Want to Sing with Awareness, published in 2020 by Rowman and Littlefield.

Dr. Hurley is currently Associate Professor of Voice at Mississippi University for Women where she teaches Voice, Opera Workshop, Voice Pedagogy, and Music Literature. Several of her current and former voice students have won top prizes at state, regional, and national NATS competitions. She earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State University in 2012.