Monica Baruch, Director of Choral Studies
Concert Group Director

Monica Baruch joined the San Francisco Girls Chorus team in the summer of 2018. Ms. Baruch has directed numerous ensembles at SFGC and feels at home in her dual role as Director of Choral Studies and Concert Group Director. She is thrilled that this is her 8th season at SFGC!

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.

Ms. Baruch 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 Opera (Die Frau ohne Schatten, Carmen, La Boheme, and Dead Man Walking), San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Solo Opera. Her favorite project includes preparing 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.