Artistic Director
Holly MacEwen Krafka, the founder of the New World Chorale, has been a conductor, educator, and performer in a wide range of musical activities for many years. A native of Wellesley, MA, she is a graduate of Gettysburg College and holds a master’s degree in choral conducting from Boston Conservatory. As a singer, Ms. Krafka was a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for 20 years and performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under internationally renowned conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Sir Colin Davis, and Seiji Ozawa at Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Hong Kong, and Japan. Ms. Krafka’s children’s choirs have performed in venues ranging from Broadway shows at Boston’s Colonial Theater to the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Austria.
Ms. Krafka has been a regular guest conductor with the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra in Milford, MA. She led the orchestra and the New World Chorale in performances of the Mozart Requiem, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and the “Broadway in Concert” series: South Pacific in Concert, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Music Man.
In September 2009, Ms. Krafka made her Hatch Shell conducting debut with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra and New World Chorale in a performance of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. From 2011–2014, Ms. Krafka was director of the Symphony NH Chorus. During that period, she also directed Colla Voce, the vocal chamber ensemble of the Symphony NH Chorus. In April 2013, Ms. Krafka conducted a chorus of former and current Jimmy Fund patients celebrating the 60-year collaboration between the Boston Red Sox and the Jimmy Fund at the Opening Day ceremonies at beloved Fenway Park in Boston, MA.
A music educator for over 30 years, Ms. Krafka has been music director and vocal director in a number of local area churches and school systems, including Wellesley, Hopkinton, and Franklin, MA and at Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, MA. She is currently Choral Director at Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua, NH.