Naples Philharmonic Youth Chorus
Barbara Sletto, youth chorus director
Ken Berg, guest composer
Thomas DeLessio, collaborative pianist
Programming to be announced.
Join the Naples Philharmonic Youth Chorus for their annual Fall Concert. This program will include a variety of choral favorites.
The Naples Philharmonic Youth Chorus (NPYC) provides young singers performance opportunities on Hayes Hall stage alongside the Naples Philharmonic and at distinct community events. The nearly 100-voice NPYC is directed by Barbara Sletto and includes singers in elementary, middle and high school. NPYC rehearses in groups divided by age and ability on Monday evenings on the Artis—Naples Cultural Campus.
Auditions for new members are held in early August and January. Students from the age of 7 through high school are encouraged to audition.
Learn more about the Naples Philharmonic Youth Chorus.
Barbara Sletto is the director of the Naples Philharmonic Youth Chorus. In addition to preparing their own choral concerts, the chorus performs with the Naples Philharmonic and guest artists from all over the world. Barbara is the founder and former artistic director for the Heartland Youth Choir and has been the artistic director of several choirs throughout the Midwest. She continues to serve HYC in their summer programming and as a consultant. She also served as an adjunct professor at Drake University. Under her direction, choirs have performed for numerous national and state conferences. Barbara has guest conducted for numerous festival and all-state choirs throughout the United States, and she has served as the guest conductor for various summer choir camps. She completed her Master of Arts in music education with a Kodály emphasis at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Barbara has 14 published and commissioned works for treble choirs, including commissions for Iowa and Indiana all-state choirs.
For 28 years, Ken Berg served as the director of choirs and fine arts chairman at John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Under his leadership, the school’s choirs consistently received the highest ratings in district, state and national festivals.
Berg has served as a state and southern division officer with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and has also served on the Training Courses Committee of the Royal School of Church Music in America. Additionally, he has taught choral arranging as an adjunct at his alma mater, Samford University. He regularly serves as a clinician and adjudicator throughout the U.S., and his music has been widely published.
After retiring from teaching high school in 2005, Berg served for six years as the full-time music minister and composer-in-residence at Mountain Brook Baptist Church, also in Birmingham. As of summer 2011, after serving as the part-time music director for 33 years, Berg now serves as the first full-time music director and resident composer for the Birmingham Boys Choir. Under his leadership, the choir has toured extensively throughout the United States and internationally, having toured in Costa Rica, Europe, Japan and Canada. The choristers of the boys choir have also sung for OAKE, MENC and ACDA state, division and national conventions.
Berg and his wife, Susan, are the proud parents of two sons, Michael and David—both fine musicians in their own right, as well as BBC alumni.
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