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 is a regular guest conductor with the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra in Milford, MA. She has 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. In July 2011, the Nashua Symphony Association in Nashua, NH appointed Ms. Krafka as director of the Nashua Choral Ensemble, the vocal chamber ensemble of the Nashua Symphony Chorus. And in March 2012, Ms. Krafka was appointed as interim director of the Nashua Symphony Chorus.

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 resides in Milford, MA and has three musical sons: Luke (cello), Pete (string bass), and Nick (jazz trumpet).