William Cowdery, Director
Chorus of the Southern Finger Lakes

William Cowdery is musical director and organist of the First Congregational Church, Ithaca.  Bill served for three years as director of Cornell University's Sage Chapel Choir.  He has been a guest conductor of the Elmira Cantata Singers and the Colgate University Chorus.  He has taught on the faculties of Cornell University, Ithaca College, Colgate University, and Keuka College as performer, musicologist, and theorist.  A frequent soloist, accompanist, and lecturer at Bach programs and festivals in the northeast, he has been a three-year fellow of the Bach Aria Festival at Stony Brook.  Bill holds a Ph.D. from Cornell for a dissertation on the cantatas of J. S. Bach and has held a Fulbright Fellowship in England.  He authored numerous articles in the New Harvard Dictionary of Music and the Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1996).  He co-edited The Compleat Mozart with Neal Zaslaw (Norton, 1990).