Director’s Note & E-Board

Elijah Botkin is a Boston-based conductor, arranger, choral educator, and performer. Graduating from Northeastern University in 2015 with bachelor’s degrees in Music History & Analysis and Mathematics, he was recently named the Music Director for Revels in December of 2021, and as the Spring Artistic Director for the Reading Community Singers. While at Northeastern, Elijah served as President and Assistant Conductor for the NU Choral Society, sang with and arranged for the award-winning a cappella group Distilled Harmony, and founded and directed the Northeastern Madrigal Singers, which he continues to conduct to this day.

Elijah’s work on Distilled Harmony’s quarterfinal-winning performance set won the distinction of Outstanding Arrangement from the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. His arrangement of “Nothing Feels Like You” by Little Mix also won a CARA (Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award) for Best Mixed Collegiate Song. In 2014, Elijah was granted the Gideon Klein Award in order to write his composition The Closed Town, which was premiered by the Northeastern University Chamber Choir in April 2015. More recently, his arrangements and compositions for Midwinter Revels: A Celebration of the Solstice were hailed by the Boston Globe as “uncannily idiomatic.”

In addition to his role with the NU Madrigal Singers, Revels, and RCS, Elijah is also a frequent performer with a variety of professional ensembles in the Boston area, with recent and upcoming performances including appearances with Carduus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, the Nightingale Vocal Ensemble season opener SALONMUSIK, and Nightingale’s upcoming season gala Renaissance Reimagined. He is passionate about using choir, and the power of singing together, to bring joy to anyone and everyone willing to lend their voice.