Dr. William Belan
Dr. William Belan is known as an innovator in the field of choral music, both as a conductor and choral scholar. He has written A Choral Conductor’s Guide to the Performance of Latin American Rhythms following more than twenty-five years of conducting, teaching, and consulting to the choral movement in Costa Rica. Most recently he has been working with Costa Rica’s national program, El Sistem de Educación Musica (SINEM), a program that provides choral and orchestral training to children in 23 locations throughout the country. Further, he is recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award for 2013 in order to teach for six months in Costa Rica during early 2013.
Other books include A Handbook For the Conducting of English Madrigals (Gentry Publications), as well as Choral Essays: A Tribute to Roger Wagner (Thomas House Publications).
Belan serves as national chair for ACDA’s Committee on Research and Publications. In a forthcoming book he will serve as editor for a volume of proceedings from The Search for An American Style, an ACDA national symposium on American choral music, held in Washington D.C., and at the Library of Congress in June 2012 (ACDA Publications).
His choral editions include English Madrigals (Gentry Publications), which are collected from the famous Huntington Library, and uniquely printed in both part-book form as well as modern-score form, and more than 100 editions of Latin-American choral music (Thomas House Publications, Gentry Publications, and Twin Elm Publications).
Dr. Belan is professor of music, emeritus, at California State University, Los Angeles, as well as adjunct professor of music at the University of Costa Rica. He holds degrees from UCLA (BA), the University of Tulsa (MM), the University of Oklahoma (DMA), and a post-doctoral certificate in executive management from the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at the Claremont Graduate University.
Dr. Belan resides in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.
