Darla Bair has prepared choruses to sing for dignitaries, for orchestra collaborations and to sing at Radio City and Madison Square Garden. Her choruses have traveled to Hawaii, Montreal, Washington, DC and many other sites around the country. Her career includes teaching Music at all levels of public school, including the courses of Music Theory, AP Theory, and Chorus at the high school level.
In 1996, Darla founded the Amadeus Chorale Youth Singers in Rochester, NY. Under her direction, they produced six full-length CDs, as well as several music videos. She has conducted many All-County Festivals throughout New York and has composed and produced dinner theater musicals as fund raisers for churches.
Her publications include “Gingerbread Manor B&B Recipes and True Stories,” from her 22 years as a B&B owner, “Singing Families,” a music instruction handbook for homeschooling families, and “More than Ho, Ho, Ho,” the memoires of her father’s sixty years as Lancaster County’s favorite Santa Claus.
As a voice actor, Darla narrated “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Peter Pan” for the New York State Ballet Company, and “Wright’s Lessons” for composer Dr. William Cahn (spotify). An article was published in the September, 2021 national journal for the American Choral Directors Association on resilience, telling of Darla’s journey as a partially deaf musician.
Moving from a small farm with sheep, chickens and a Victorian house in upstate NY occurred in January, 2022, when Darla chose to be closer to her aging parents in Lancaster, PA. In addition to her musical life, Darla is an ordained Interfaith Elder who publishes a GODtalk each week through the Calm in the Chaos Interfaith Center. Darla is mother to two daughters who make their way in the world through the Arts. Molly, a glass artist, lives in Dayton, Ohio; Emily, a harpist and college teacher, lives in Queens, NY. Darla is now the fur mom to Charlotte, the therapy dachshund and Beatrice, the toddler chihuahua.
Darla has one unfulfilled item on her musical bucket list: to sing for a sitting president.