About Us
Our mission and vision are below, but if you want to know the inside story of the Contra Costa Chorale just click on our GuideStar seal at the top of the page.
Dr. Brad Schultz, Artistic Director
Dr. Brad Schultz became the Artistic Director of the Contra Costa Chorale beginning with the Fall 2024 season. A native of Minnesota, Brad’s musical background includes vocal and instrumental performance and conducting, church and community music making, university teaching and public musicology.
Brad is also the minister of music at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Belvedere, where he directs the sanctuary choir, plays the organ, and organizes a concert series. He has previously served United Methodist, Unitarian Universalist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian congregations in Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota, Idaho, and Georgia. In addition to his duties with the Chorale and in Belvedere, Brad lectures on music topics at the Belvedere-Tiburon Public Library and is an associate faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College, with appointments in the music and lifelong learning departments.
Brad holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Oregon with a certificate in Historical Performance Practice. His dissertation focuses on the keyboard works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, a composer active in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century, through lenses of embodied cognition, rhetoric, and organology (the study of musical instruments).
Brad also teaches online music courses for the University of Oregon and previously served on the faculty of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He performs regularly as an organist, collaborative keyboardist and continuo player, and conductor, and enjoys making music with other musicians in the Bay Area. He received a Master’s of Sacred Music degree in organ performance from Emory University and Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA, and a Bachelor’s degree in tuba performance from Luther College. He lives in Tiburon with his husband Matt, a digital advertising consultant.
Christopher Alexander, Collaborative Keyboard Artist
Christopher Alexander is a pianist and composer currently residing in Emeryville. Receiving a B.A. in Music and English at St. Olaf College, MN, Christopher sang in the St. Olaf Viking and Cantorei choruses, as well as the student led gospel choir, German choir, and lab choirs. After graduation, Christopher spent two years in Rochester, Minnesota building a private piano studio of over 50 students, received a SEMAC (Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council) grant to put on a collaborative jazz music recital, and performed a self-curated live performance of a silent film at Gray Duck Theater and Coffeehouse. He was also the collaborative keyboardist for the Rochester Male Chorus for one year.
In 2019 he relocated to the Bay Area, California where he continued teaching private piano lessons, and served as pianist at St Francis Episcopal Church in Novato. In 2022 he began formally composing and releasing songs inspired by his love of nature, literature, and philosophy and released his first EP “Searching for Stars” in 2024. He has released thirteen original compositions, including recent collaborations with piano and cello. He is also active in the local live music scene playing with various vocalists and bands in all genres of music, including an acoustic singer songwriter duo “Quintessence” with his wife.
Our Mission
The Contra Costa Chorale is a nonprofit organization open to singers of various ages, backgrounds, and musical experience. The Chorale is committed to a high level of performance. It promotes the timeless tradition of choral singing as a community builder, providing open access to a diversity of singers and audiences alike. We focus on vocal and choral techniques, help members develop their musical skills, and strive to build a sense of community within its membership and with its audiences. The Chorale’s repertoire includes sacred and secular music from the Renaissance through the 21st century encompassing a wide variety of styles both popular and traditional, with a strong emphasis on the performance of classical choral literature. We seek to bring this music to wide and diverse audiences in our original home community of Richmond and the other communities of West and Central Contra Costa County.
Our Vision
The Contra Costa Chorale will achieve the highest level of excellence in choral performance equal to or better than any non-auditioned community chorus in the San Francisco Bay Area.