About

William Myers-Ortiz is a singer and choral conductor based in Baltimore. In all his music making, he explores the potential of music as a recreative process that invites people to move, breathe, and reflect together.

William approaches conducting as a dynamic leader, educator, and technician, and he seeks to drive people around him to be their best, musically and beyond. Since 2017, he has assistant-conducted a range of community, academic, and church choirs and served as interim director for the University of Chicago Glee Club. In 2022, he co-founded the Choral Collective at McGill university, a cohort of musicians building ensemble techniques through peer-to-peer learning and workshops. In Baltimore, William is a co-founder and artistic director of New Choir of Mt. Vernon, a volunteer choir centered on new, secular choral music and dedicated to the enrichment of its local community. New Choir has presented three concerts since June 2024 and continues to expand its presence and reputation for creating beauty in the music it performs and the connections in builds. He is also an associate conductor for Bach in Baltimore, and delights in the enrichment this group provides to its volunteer singers and audiences through excellent historical music.

William’s conducting is guided and enriched by his range of experiences singing in choirs. He has appeared in concert with professional ensembles including Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus and Constellation Men’s Ensemble, sung on CDs with the Choir of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul and New Muses Project, and soloed in concert with the Emmanuel Choir and the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers. His experiences with amateur choirs, notably the Peabody Hopkins Conservatory Choir (PHCC), Chicago Chorale, and Montréal’s Les Voix Férrées, have been just as meaningful to him, inspiring joy and deep commitment to the people these groups impact. In Baltimore, William is thrilled to sing in the Emmanuel Choir where he occasionally conducts and provided assistant direction for the choir’s concert of the All Night Vigil by Sergei Rachmaninoff (2024).  

William holds degrees from the University of Chicago and McGill University. A member of the inaugural class of choral conductors at Peabody Institute, he currently serves as a graduate assistant for the vocal ensembles at Peabody and will earn a graduate performance diploma in 2026 under Beth Willer. He reads and writes poetry, is a dedicated member of his local running club, and a public transit enthusiast. Outside of choir rehearsal, he is typically found in the cozy and understatedly beautiful walking radius of his home in the  Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore.