Bios
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.
Martin Morley, Collaborative Keyboard Artist
A native of Montana, Martin Morley has enjoyed a multifaceted career as a pianist, music therapist, teacher, handbell clinician, and conductor. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano performance from the University of Kansas, where he studied with Flora Chiarrapa Silini, Richard Angeletti, and Portuguese virtuoso Sequeira Costa; in addition, Martin performed for six years in monthly master classes with such luminaries as Gary Graffman, Byron Janis, and Leon Fleisher. He has toured North America as an accompanist for Columbia Artists Management and been featured as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Kansas, California, and Texas. His keyboard comedy routines have slain audiences in several states. Martin is on the Master Artists roster of the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society, and has performed several times in benefit concerts for the Contra Costa Interfaith Housing organization and for the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his position as Director of Worship and Music at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lafayette, Martin teaches private lessons and continues performing as a soloist and collaborative pianist in the Bay Area and beyond.