Joseph A. Herter, a native of Detroit, is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Music in Ann Arbor, where he studied voice with Rosemary Russell, conducting with Thomas Hilbish and Gustav Meier, and musicology with Glenn Watkins. Mr. Herter continued his education with summer choral studies at Westminster Choir College in Princeton. He also studied orchestral conducting as a member of the 1984 conductors’ seminar at Tanglewood. At the beginning of his career, Joseph Herter worked as music teacher and music director in several Detroit Roman Catholic schools and churches, including downtown’s historic Old St. Mary’s Church, known for its outstanding music program and orchestral Latin Masses. After going to Poland in 1974 as a Kosciuszko Foundation grantee, he relocated there and has lived in Poland ever since. In his adopted homeland, Mr. Herter has been very active as a teacher and conductor, with numerous engagements leading the philharmonic orchestras of Częstochowa, Jelenia Góra, Kielce, Koszalin, Lublin, Łódź, Olsztyn, Opole, and Szczecin, as well as the Warsaw National Philharmonic, with whom he also has recorded the soundtrack for feature films and TV serials. For nearly twenty years, Maestro Herter has been working at the Teatr Rozrywki, a music theater in northern Silesia, conducting American musicals, such as West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. Joseph Herter is also the founder and conductor of Cantores Minores, the Warsaw Archdiocesan Cathedral Boys’ and Men’s Choir. Together, they have traveled to seventeen countries and taken part in twenty-eight festivals. Under Mr. Herter’s direction, Cantores Minores has won top prizes at competitions in Lecco, Prague, Moscow, and Międzydroje. In addition to his busy performing schedule, Joseph Herter is widely respected as a writer for such international publications as The Polish Review, Polish Music Journal, Polish Music Newsletter, and Elgar Society Journal. In Poland, he is a frequent contributor to Muzyka 21 and Ruch Muzyczny. Mr. Herter has been invited to deliver papers and lectures at various conferences and symposia in Berlin, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. The long and distinguished record of Joseph Herter’s musical activities has been universally recognized: he is a recipient of awards from the City of Warsaw (1999), the Polish Ministry of Culture (2003) and the Polish Union of Choirs and Orchestras (2005). In 2004, Joseph Herter was elected an Honorary Member of the Polish Singers’ Alliance of America, North America’s oldest Polish cultural society. Since November 2006, he has been the Warsaw representative of the Kosciuszko Foundation. Joseph Herter’s pioneering research of pianist and composer Zygmunt Stojowski led to the reintroduction of Stojowski’s music to the concert stage and the release of several commercial recordings over the past few years.