Cantate: Bosque School Choir

Joanna Carlson Hart director

At Bosque, music plays a central role in the school’s culture. Cantate, the upper school choir, has traveled and performed as part of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest Arts Festivals in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico; in Savannah, Georgia; St. Mary’s Basilica in Phoenix, Arizona; on the world-famous stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City; as part of the Disney Performing Arts series on stage at Disneyland; in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican; the Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, Italy; and at the historic Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. 

Joanna Carlson Hart is a graduate of the Master’s program in vocal performance at the University of New Mexico and received her Bachelor’s degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where she studied under the renowned conductor and composer René Clausen. Ms. Hart has sung roles with the Santa Fe Opera, Opera Southwest, UNM Opera Theatre, and the International Opera Academy in Rome, and as a soloist with the Albuquerque Philharmonic, Concordia Choir, St. Joseph Symphony, UNM Orchestra, and the Concordia College Orchestra. In the fall of 2011, Ms. Hart performed the soprano solo under the direction of Dr. Clausen at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City for his piece Memorial. She is in her nineteenth year as director of choirs at Bosque School, an independent College Preparatory School, and has found another love in teaching. Under her direction, the choirs have grown from six students to seventy-five in the upper school, and doubled in size in the middle school. Ms. Hart is often invited to adjudicate solo and ensemble and choral festivals throughout New Mexico and loves to work with all choirs and singers.