Carol Kozak Ward

Carol Kozak Ward, Founder and Music Director,

Colorado Hebrew Chorale

For nearly forty years, Carol Kozak Ward has been active as an educator, performer, conductor and specialist in the Hebrew choral repertoire. Her most recent presentation,“The 4-H Club: Holocaust, Hanukkah, and High Holidays” took place at the North American Jewish Choral Festival in July, 2014, and in the past decade, she 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.

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. 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, Martin Bresnick, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron Jay Kernis.

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.