JACE WITTIG

Baritone, clinician, and educator Jace Wittig joined Cantabile as a guest artist in 2014, following a nearly nine-year tenure with GRAMMY Award-winning men’s choir, Chanticleer. He received his Bachelors of Music degree in Vocal Performance at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, studying voice with Dr. Craig Priebe and piano with Dr. Jim Helton.

Mr. Wittig sang baritone with Chanticleer for five seasons, after which he was appointed as the Interim Music Director from 2011 to 2014. As a baritone in Chanticleer, his voice can be heard on nine commercial CDs, under the artistic direction of Joseph Jennings and Matthew Oltman. In his three years as Music Director, he oversaw the production of four live concert recordings and directed acclaimed performances at the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Prague Rudolfinum, the Budapest Liszt Academy, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Concert Hall, the Singapore Esplanade, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the and the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, among others. In 2012, Wittig commissioned and conducted Chanticleer’s latest studio release, “Someone New,” recorded at Skywalker Sound in California. As Music Director, he also served as adviser to the ensemble’s education program, which engages approximately 5000 students around the world each year in masterclasses and choral festivals all over the United States. He conducted Chanticleer choral workshops in Austria, Ireland, Singapore, and China, as well as the Chanticleer in Sonoma Summer Choral Workshop.

An active participant in the San Francisco Bay Area choral scene, he taught as an Artist-in-Residence at the San Francisco School of the Arts (a public high school) for 6 years, and has served as a Guest Conductor for the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, an award-winning chorus dedicated to the commissioning and performance of new choral music. In 2015, Wittig founded GAUDE, a professional a cappella octet specializing in music of the Renaissance. GAUDE currently maintains an active concert season and engages local high school choruses in educational workshops to foster community and enthusiasm for the choral art form. In 2019, he was appointed Associate Artistic Director of Cantabile, and looks forward to continuing his work as the Young Men's Division Director and conductor of Cantabile's a cappella treble ensemble, Aria.