Artistic Staff

Javier José Mendoza : Music Director and Conductor

Javier José Mendoza Javier José Mendoza is the Music Director and Conductor of the Chicago Arts Orchestra. In addition to these responsibilities, Mr. Mendoza has garnered a reputation as a leading conductor of youth ensembles. He serves as the Music Director of the West Suburban Youth Orchestras of Chicago. Professionally, Mr. Mendoza has attended the conductor-training program at Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, working with the Festival Orchestra of Sofia, Bulgaria and Maestro Gianluigi Gelmetti of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Other ventures have found Mr. Mendoza serving as the Assistant Chorus Master for the "Music in the Mountains Festival," Durango, Colorado, as well as guest conducting the Young People's Chorus of New York City as part of the Transient Glory Symposium. International performances have included guest conducting the State Philharmonic of Sibiu, Romania, as well as his Latin American community music projects.

In the summer of 2007, Mr. Mendoza was guest faculty at Colegio Internacional Montessori in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Mr. Mendoza led the Metropolis Chamber Ensemble, Coro Nacional de Niños and Coro Nacional de Jovenes in the Teatro Nacional, "National Theatre, " in performance of Vivaldi's Gloria in the summer of 2008. Mr Mendoza returned to Guatemala in the summer of 2009 as Artistic Director of the International Music Festival of the Americas with performances at the Teatro Nacional and San José el Viejo. Also in 2009, Maestro Mendoza led the Chicago Arts Orchestra in performances at San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, Mexico.

Mr. Mendoza believes very strongly in the power that music has to build community and break down barriers; particularly those which affect Latin American populations around the world. Recently, Mr. Mendoza was appointed to serve on the North American Coalition of Community Music; an organization whose membership includes professors from North American Universities. The Coalition acts as a think-tank on issues involving community music and musicians throughout the Americas. Additional affiliations include the League of American Orchestras, American Choral Directors Association as well as the Conductors Guild. Mr. Mendoza did his Undergraduate studies at Butler University in Indianapolis with acclaimed conductor Henry Leck, and served as an intern conductor with the world-renowned Indianapolis Children's Choir. Mendoza completed his Graduate studies in conducting at the University of New Mexico, where he worked with composer/conductor Bradley Ellingboe. Mendoza graduated with distinction, receiving the Master of Music Degree. While in New Mexico, he was apprentice conductor to Roger Melone, Resident Conductor of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and continues to utilize his resources in New Mexico to advance his advocacy of Latin American Community Music.

Mendoza in the news

Classic Act: Looking at Javier Mendoza
Playing to the Cheap Seats
Mutual Inspiration : Conductor, Youth Orchestra Spark Each Other's Passion for Music

Elda Peralta : Chicago Arts Chorale, Soprano

Elda Peralta, lyric mezzo-soprano, is a native of Tijuana, México. Peralta earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and completed her masters of music degree in Voice Performance & Literature at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. She has performed as a soloist with the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, the Orquesta de Baja California, Opera de Tijuana, the Aspen Opera Theater Center, Castleton Artists Training Seminar, and at Northwestern University she performed the roles of Vera Boronel (The Consul), Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro), and the roles of Susanna and Samira for Northwestern's production of The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, among those, 1st place in the graduate division of NATS Chicago Chapter in 2009 and recently she was one of four winners in the Evanston Music Club Competition. She currently studies with Theresa Brancaccio and lives in Evanston with her husband, Joel.

Eleanor Ranney-Mendoza : Chicago Arts Chorale, Soprano

Eleanor Ranney-Mendoza is on the Faculty of Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. Mrs. Mendoza performs early music, chamber music and opera. Mrs. Mendoza earned a Masters degree from Mannes Conservatory, The New School for Music in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of New Mexico. She has created such roles as Susannah in The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, Yum Yum in the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan and the role of Nannetta in Falstaff by Verdi. Mrs. Mendoza most recently performed a solo recital at St. Peter's Church in Chicago, Illinois, as soprano soloist in Carmina Burana by Carl Orff with the University of New Mexico Chorus and Orchestra, and soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah with the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra. This month Eleanor appeared with the Newberry Consort in Music and Miracles: Los Cantigas de Santa Maria.

Eleanor teaches voice at Franklin College as well as music classes to infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Eleanor is a native of Santa Fe NM and currently performs and resides in Chicago IL.

Drew Edward Davies : Artistic Advisors

Drew Edward Davies is a specialist in 16th- through 18th-century musics of Latin America and Iberia in global contexts, and 20th-century Britain. His research interests include Spanish viceregal/colonial arts and cultures; historiography; cultural studies; medieval music; post-Tridentine church music; 20th-century English art song. Davies' articles and reviews have been published in Eighteenth-Century Music, Sanctorum, Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, Journal of the Society for American Music, Heterofonía, BoletínMúsica (Havana) and The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. His dissertation, The Italianized Frontier: Music at Durango Cathedral, Español Culture, and the Aesthetics of Devotion in Eighteenth-Century New Spain," received the 2006 Wiley Housewright Award from the Society for American Music. Davies' monograph, Music and Devotion in New Spain, is under contract with Oxford University Press and an edition of the complete works of Santiago Billoni, an 18th-century Italian composer in New Spain, is forthcoming from A-R Editions in the Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque series. In preparation is a complete thematic catalog of the music archive of Durango Cathedral, Mexico. Davies is the Mexico City Regional Coordinator for Musicat, the Seminario Nacional de Música en la Nueva España y el México Independiente (National Seminar on the Music of New Spain and Independent Mexico) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He frequently collaborates with early music ensembles and has been a presenter at academic conferences throughout the USA, and in Mexico, the UK, Spain, Cuba, Poland, and Japan.

Dianne Lehmann Goldman : Artistic Advisors

Dianne Lehmann Goldman is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Northwestern University. She discovered her love of music transcription and archival work while she was an undergraduate student at University of California, Davis. She graduated with two Bachelors degrees (Music and Spanish) in 2003. Dianne continued her studies at University of California, Santa Cruz and graduated with a Masters degree in Music in 2005. Her Master's Thesis was titled "A Diamond among Jewels: Matheo Tollis de la Rocca and his Place in Mexican Viceregal Music." During her time at Northwestern she has been the recipient of numerous travel and research grants, including the Graduate Research Grant awarded through the Graduate School at Northwestern. Her article "Findings Concerning the Life and Spanish Origin of Matheo Tollis de la Rocca" was published in the Cuadernos del Seminario Nacional de la Música en la Nueva España y el México Independiente (vol. 3, 2008). After a month-long research trip to Mexico City last August, she is currently writing her dissertation – a study of the history and development of the responsory genre in Mexico City between 1575 and 1815.

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