Linda L. Tedford

Linda L. Tedford is the Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor of the award-winning Susquehanna Chorale, established in 1981. She is responsible for the creation of the Chorale's Educational Outreach program, which reaches hundreds of local student singers annually. Ms. Tedford is Professor Emeritus at Messiah College in Grantham, PA, where she taught conducting and conducted the Concert Choir, the Chamber Singers, the Men’s Ensemble, and the Messiah College Choral Arts Society. Choirs under her leadership have performed at regional and state conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA); for the Legislature and Governor of Pennsylvania; and in several European venues. Her work is featured on over 16 professionally produced CDs, and her choirs appear regularly with the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra. 
In 1994, Ms. Tedford and the Susquehanna Chorale received Chorus America's highest lifetime award, The Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence, and in 2020 it tied for second place in the American Prize competition.  Ms. Tedford is the 2011 recipient of ACDA-PA's Elaine Brown Award for Choral Excellence for outstanding lifelong work in the choral art. In 2013, she received Theatre Harrisburg's Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts in the Capital Region. 
Ms. Tedford holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Temple University, where she studied with internationally renowned conductor Robert Page. She pursued additional study at Westminster Choir College, as well as with prominent conductors such as Robert Shaw, Gregg Smith, and Dale Warland, and with voice teachers Robert Grooters and Thomas Houser. As a member of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, she has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of such conductors as Eugene Ormandy, Ricardo Muti, and Claudio Abbado. She has served as a member of the Choral/Opera Panel for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and she has been the Community Choruses Repertoire and Standards Committee Chairperson for ACDA in Pennsylvania and in the Eastern Division. She is an active member of Chorus America and the American Choral Directors Association. Ms. Tedford is a frequent guest conductor and clinician.