Choral Arts Collective Artistic Director Welborn Young has been the Artistic Director and Conductor of Bel Canto Company since 2005. Critics describe his work as “inspired,” “glorious, precision-honed,” “exquisite,” and as a display of “…intense attention to details of dynamic shading and rhythmic nuance.” He regularly performs a variety of music ranging from large choral-orchestral works such as Bach’s St. John Passion, Forrest’s Jubilate Deo and Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light: The Passion of Joan of Arc to intimate a cappella works.

Under his direction, Bel Canto Company was the annual concert ensemble for Hinshaw Music’s Celebration, has performed at Southern Regional and State ACDA conferences, and continues to be a featured ensemble at regional concert series. Concert recordings were featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Bel Canto Company released six CDs that highlight live performances: Rejoice and Be Merry, American Perspectives, Radiance, Joyful Noise, the premiere of Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living chamber edition, and Forrest’s the breath of life commissioned by Bel Canto Company.

For seven years, Dr. Young served as the conductor of the Choral Society of Greensboro in performances of major choral-orchestral works. He has been a featured festival conductor at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, at the York Minster International Choral Festival in Great Britain, and at Carnegie Hall. In 1998 he prepared the Grant Park Symphony Chorus in their first recording.

Dr. Young is a guest conductor for honor choirs and is a clinician in festivals and clinics throughout the US. His choirs have toured in Europe in cities such as Florence, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Cambridge, York, and London. Also a lover of opera, he has worked with Nashville Opera and Greensboro Opera. Dr. Young holds the DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is Professor Emeritus and served as the Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina Greensboro where he was the recipient of the 2007 Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award.