Biography
- DMA, choral conducting, University of Kansas
- MM, choral conducting, University of Kansas
- BME, K-12 certification, University of Northern Colorado
Mitos Andaya Hart (she/her/hers) teaches undergraduate conducting, graduate choral literature, assists with graduate conducting, and directs the Temple University Singers and Temple Voices. Prior to her appointment at Temple, she served as Associate Director of Choral Activities at the University of Georgia where she directed ensembles in early music, jazz, women’s, chamber, and symphonic chorus repertoire. There she was awarded one of the university’s highest honors, the Richard B. Russell Undergraduate Teaching Award, and twice received the Student Government Association Award for “Outstanding Commitment to Students and Academic Excellence.”
Andaya Hart has taught choral music and vocal jazz at the university level in the United States, South Africa, and Australia. She taught at the Center of Jazz and Popular Music with Darius Brubeck at the University of Natal (now University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa) forming the first university vocal jazz ensemble in the country, and at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, South Australia. She served as guest conductor of the Netherlands Chamber Choir in Amsterdam and Arnhem in 2007; conducted the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir in concert at the Lund International Choral Festival in Sweden; and conducted the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Netherlands Radio Chorus, in Haarlem in 2005. She conducted at the 2005 Transient Glory Choral and Chamber Music Festival in New York and worked with Pulitzer Prize winning-composer, David Del Tredici. In 2004, she prepared ensembles for the BBC Philharmonic conductor/Scottish composer, James MacMillan, for his Georgia residency. She was selected to study with Marin Alsop at the Colorado Symphony Orchestra Workshop in 2003, Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival in 2003 and 2004, Simon Halsey and André Thomas in Haarlem, Netherlands in 2005, and Frieder Bernius in Varese, Italy in 2006. Her conducting teachers at the University of Kansas were Simon Carrington and orchestral conductor, Brian Priestman.
Her ensembles have been invited to perform throughout the United States such as at the Boston Early Music Festival, Southern American Choral Directors Association Conference, and the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival. Her choirs have also traveled and performed in England, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal and Spain. She served on the conducting faculty of the Westminster Chamber Choir with Westminster Choir College of Rider University and has served as a member of the judges panel for the International A Cappella Festival in Leipzig, Germany. In 2010, she served as the clinician and guest conductor for the First Kenyan Choral Directors National Conference hosted by Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya and in 2013 for the First Busan Choral Academy in South Korea. She has conducted various honor choirs and all-state choirs in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and continues to serve as a national clinician, adjudicator and guest conductor for festivals.
Andaya Hart has Renaissance and other editions published with Alliance Music Publications, and jazz compositions and arrangements with UNC Jazz Press and Hal Leonard. She served as the chair for Jazz Repertoire and Standards for the Georgia American Choral Directors Association, is active in the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, and the International Federation of Choral Music. She served on the National Board of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO) as Vice-President, President-Elect, then as President culminating in the 2015 National Conference in Portland.
Since 2014, Andaya Hart has been the Artistic Director of PhilHarmonia, a Philadelphia-based chamber choir which has commissioned and premiered works including Melissa Dunphy’s American DREAMers based on texts by young American Immigrants and DACA recipients.
She is married and proud to live in a multigenerational and multi-pet home, raising her grade-school son.