Monica Baruch, Director of Choral Studies
Concert Group Director

Monica Baruch, a Los Angeles native, joined the San Francisco Girls Chorus team in the summer of 2018. Ms. Baruch has directed numerous ensembles at SFGC and is excited to step into the roles of Director of Choral Studies and Concert Group Director for the 2024-25 season.

After graduating magna cum laude from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Ms. Baruch spent eight years as a choir director in the Palo Alto Unified School District, where she taught music and choir at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Before her time in the Bay Area, Ms. Baruch lived in Washington, D.C., where she promoted arts education outreach at the national level at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As a credentialed K-12 music teacher in California and certified Orff-Schulwerk and Kodály instructor, Ms. Baruch has ample experience teaching singers and choirs of all ages, and draws on all of her training to create engaging, challenging, creative, and fulfilling choral experiences for young singers.

Ms. Baruch is on the current roster of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and has sung under such batons as Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jane Glover, Grant Gershon, Nathalie Schutzman, and Ragnar Bohlin. She has led reading sessions for CMEA conferences and has prepared SFGC choristers to perform in productions with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Solo Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Most recently, she prepared SFGC singers for the world premiere of O Future, a new opera by Thierry Pécou, which debuted at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France, in June 2024. She is looking forward to SFGC Concert Group singers participating in the Fall 2024 production of Carmen at the San Francisco Opera.