About

William Myers-Ortiz is a singer and choral conductor based in Baltimore whose musical work centers on helping people to move, breathe, and learn together.

William is a co-founder and artistic director of New Choir of Mount Vernon, a choir centered on new, secular choral music. Since 2024, New Choir has become known for its rapid growth, ambitious programing, and cohesive sound. In 2025, NCMV premiered the first version of Majel Connery’s The Rivers are Our Brothers since Chanticleer’s acclaimed recording of the piece. A passionate advocate and practitioner of community music, William is also the associate conductor for Bach in Baltimore, preparing several chorus pieces and appearing in performance with the organization’s professional orchestra and soloists.

William’s leadership in academic ensembles spans over a decade, including serving as interim director for the University of Chicago Glee Club, assistant conducting at both McGill University and the Peabody Institute (at the latter, assisting on Luigi Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigionia, Béla Bartók’s Cantata Profana, and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana). His graduate recitals have served as fertile ground for experimentation creativity, including a program interweaving Monteverdi songs with Judith Wier’s little tree (both sets accompanied by marimba), and pairing Roxanna Panufnik’s Westminster Mass with a newly commissioned setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Outside of school, William has remained an active church musician with a specialization in Anglican traditions. He made several appearances with the choirs of Emmanuel Episcopal Church and Grace and Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore (including assisting conducting on the former’s performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil) and has guest conducted at other Episcopal and Anglo-Catholic parishes.

Throughout his early career, William has been known for creating new music, new ensembles, and new opportunities music to grow. In 2022, he co-founded the Choral Collective at McGill, a cohort of musicians building ensemble techniques through peer-to-peer learning and workshops. Since enrolling at Peabody, William has earned nearly $10,000 in grants for projects to supplement his studies, most of which has gone to commissioning and recording new music. In 2026, he won Peabody’s LAUNCH Grant to fund an intensive composer workshop in partnership with New Choir of Mount Vernon, a project that will lead to the creation of several new works for the amateur choir to perform and record. He has also been at the helm of student-led small ensemble projects at Peabody, co-leading a performance of Francis Poulenc’s Un soir de neige and founding the Cornerstones, a new tenor-bass quartet, for performances on and off campus.

William’s conducting is rooted in his wealth of singing experience, from amateur choirs to professionals, equally at home in small consorts and in symphonic choruses. He has sung with ensembles including Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus, Montreal’s Chœur Métropolitain, and Constellation Men’s Ensemble, appeared on CDs with the Choir of the Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Paul and New Muses Project, and soloed with the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers and the Emmanuel Choir. Formerly a member of the Emmanuel Choir, he regularly freelances at church parishes in Baltimore and Washington, DC and appears with vocal ensembles of all variety at Peabody.

William holds degrees from the University of Chicago, McGill University, and holds a graduate performance diploma from Peabody. He is an alumnus of the Chorus America Conducting Academy, where he conducted part of Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem with orchestra, as well as summer conducting institutes at Westminster Choir College and Interlochen Center for the Arts. He currently serves as a graduate assistant for vocal ensembles at Peabody and will earn a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) under Beth Willer in 2030. He has also studied with Jean-Sébastien Vallée, Donald Nally, Edward Maclary, Michael Christie, and Marin Alsop. Outside of choir rehearsals, he can be found reading and writing, out with his local running club, and getting around town by foot and public transit.