p>For over fifty years, Carol Kozak Ward has been active as an educator, performer, conductor and specialist in the Hebrew choral repertoire. Locally, Ms. Ward has appeared as a guest conductor for the St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, and a presenter and facilitator, she is often asked to share “The 4-H Club: Holocaust, Hanukkah, and High Holidays”. Ms. Ward has also offered workshops on Jewish liturgical music for the Colorado chapter of ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) and the national conference of the Universalist-Unitarian Music Ministers. In addition, Ms. Ward is an advocate of contemporary choral works, regularly featuring new compositions and arrangements in her programs, and has commissioned composers such as Gerald Cohen (both in 1983 and 2024), Martin Bresnick, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron Jay Kernis.
Over her career as a music educator, Ms. Ward has taught at a variety of public, private, and parochial schools and universities, in Connecticut, New York, Colorado, and Israel. Together with the Colorado Hebrew Chorale, she has created educational programming for schools and libraries, including “Just in time for Chanukah”, “The Girl Who Sang: In Story and Song”, and “Sharing Shalom.”
Ms. Ward holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from the Yale University School of Music, where her teachers included Otto Werner Mueller, Paul Mueller, Fenno Health, and Johannes Somary. She has also performed in choruses under the direction of Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Margaret Hillis, and Robert Shaw, and has participated in master classes with Howard Swan and Dale Warland. Ms. Ward also earned an M.A. in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an undergraduate degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University. Originally from Connecticut, Ms. Ward and her family lived in Haifa, Israel for six years before relocating to Colorado in 1991.