Dr. Bill Cutter was appointed artistic director of the Santa Barbara Master Chorale in the summer of 2026. Originally from Pennsylvania, Cutter spent many years professionally active as a conductor, educator, composer, pianist, and singer in Boston Massachusetts where he earned both a Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Boston University College of Fine Arts.

After thirty-two years, Cutter retired as Director of Choral Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July 2022. Cutter is also former Director of Choral Studies at the Boston Conservatory and former Professor of Core Studies at Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he taught two advanced composition classes as well as Harmony and Counterpoint classes. He was also an adjunct Professor of Conducting at the Boston University College of Fine Arts.

Cutter was the Artistic Director and founder of the Boston Conservatory Vocal/Choral Intensive for talented high school vocalists for fifteen years. He has also served as music director and conductor of the Brookline Chorus, an auditioned community chorus of eighty voices, for five seasons. and served as Chorus Master and Associate Conductor of the Boston Lyric Opera Company from 2002-2007. For five summers he was conductor of the Boston University Young Artists Chorus of the Tanglewood Institute, and was music director and conductor of the Opera Laboratory Theater
Company, as well as founder and music director of the vocal chamber ensemble CANTO which specialized in contemporary choral music.

As assistant to Maestro John Oliver for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus from 1993 to 2017, Cutter served as rehearsal conductor or chorus master for various programs of both the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops.

Cutter has also served as chorus master for Odyssey Opera most recently for Boston Youth Symphony’s production of Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust” at Harvard University. He has been guest conductor of the Montreal Symphony Chorus, The New England Conservatory Chamber Singers, The Boston Choral Ensemble, The Walnut Hill School for the Arts and The Massachusetts Intercollegiate Choral Festival.

With advanced degrees in composition, Cutter maintains an active career as a composer with choral music published by Hal Leonard Publishers; E.C. Schimer; Lawson and Gould; Alfred Educational Publishers, G.I.A. Publications and Roger Dean Publishers.

His primary composition teachers included Pulitzer Prize winning composers David del Tredici and Bernard Rands.