“For 200 years, this music has pretty much been confined to the same structures and settings. I stepped back and asked how else can we build the experience—to make it easy and natural for more people to enjoy.”
What’s Emily listening to
A dynamic and engaging leader, Dr. Emily Isaacson launched Portland Bach Experience in 2017 to bring world-class music back into social spaces and people’s everyday lives.
She believes everyone should experience the transformative power of live classical music, but that traditional concert practices often get in the way.
Emily’s performances have been heralded as “inventive, enlightening, and moving” (Portland Press Herald), “little short of phenomenal” (Maine Classical Beat), and “not just music...the full panoply of human creative endeavor” (Wiscasset Newspaper). Emily is Artistic Director of the Oratorio Chorale, a symphonic chorus and professional orchestra in Maine, and Founder and Artistic Director of the Portland Bach Experience, a festival celebrating the music of the Baroque era in both familiar and progressive formats that help listeners bridge the musical traditions of the past with the experience of the 21st century.
In 2008, Emily helped to launch Roomful of Teeth, a GRAMMY-winning new vocal music ensemble. While serving as the Director of Choral Activities at Clark University, in 2015 Isaacson was awarded third place for the American Prize in Performing Arts, Choral Conducting, and in 2016 joined faculty from the Juilliard School for the Portland Bach Festival. Emily is a frequent guest conductor, adjudicator and speaker at music festivals and conferences throughout New England.
Emily is shaking up where and how we experience great art. One of only a handful of female conductors in the country, she was recently named the “Maine Artist of the Year” by the Maine Arts Commission and one of “50 Mainers Balancing Heritage and Progress” by Maine Magazine.
A graduate of Williams College, in 2004 Emily was one of two U.S. citizens awarded the St. Andrews Society Fellowship for graduate study in Scotland, where she read for a master’s degree in musicology at Edinburgh University. Emily holds a second master’s degree from the University of Oregon and a doctorate in musical arts in choral conducting from the University of Illinois. Emily lives in Portland with her husband, daughter, and son.