Duain Wolfe

Three-time Grammy winner for Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Recording, and Best Opera Performance, Duain Wolfe is in his 20th season of preparing choral works for the National Arts Centre Orchestra and his 40th season as founder-director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Well known for his work with children, he is Founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years.

Wolfe recently retired as Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus after 28 years. In 2008 he conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a tribute concert of choral/orchestral masterworks as the culmination of the Chorus’s season-long 50th-anniversary celebration. He also directed the Chorus for the 1998 Grammy Award-winning recording of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the late Sir Georg Solti.

Wolfe’s other accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo! Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. For 20 years, he also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs.

In 2012 Duain Wolfe received the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art, awarded by Chorus America.