Zanaida Robles is the artistic director of the San Gabriel Valley Choral company. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Robles served for five years as director of classical choirs at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).  Under her direction, the LACHSA classical choirs performed for numerous festivals, concerts, and special events at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and in venues throughout Southern California.  She remains on faculty at LACHSA as instructor of vocal fundamentals while pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral music at the University of Southern California (USC).  As a DMA Teaching Assistant at USC, she directs the USC Thornton University Chorus.

In addition to her work at USC and LACHSA, Ms. Robles directs Discovery Camerata, a choral organization founded in 2005 to facilitate a semi-professional setting for emerging vocalists and composers. The group has become an elite sextet of vocal music professionals performing choral standards, folk songs, arrangements, and new music.  She served for three years as director of the MusicUNTOLD Chorale where a focus of her work was to help illuminate significant works and composers that had been underutilized, unfairly criticized, and/or disregarded.  She has prepared choirs for performances with such artists as Josh Groban, Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald and Wayne Brady.

Ms. Robles holds a Master of Music degree in choral conducting from California State University, Northridge (CSUN) where she was the graduate assistant conductor of the Northridge Singers and the Matador Master Chorale.  She also served as chorus master for the CSUN opera department and interim director of the CSUN Women’s Chorus.  She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from California State University, Long Beach, where she was the first recipient of the four-year Dean’s Scholarship for Distinction in the Arts.

Ms. Robles has performed as a concert soprano soloist and ensemble member throughout the United States, and in parts of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia.  She sings professionally with Pacific Chorale and the John Alexander Singers, and has sung under the batons of such conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Pierre Boulez, John Mauceri, Leonard Slatkin, and Gustavo Dudamel.  Ms. Robles has been the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions including the Young Musicians Foundation Gladys Turk Scholarship, a USC Choral Department scholarship, a USC Black Alumni Association scholarship, two L.A. Artist of the Future awards, the NFAA Young Arts Level One Award in classical voice, two Charles Dolo Coker Jazz Awards, the KCET Emerging Young Artist Grand Prize, and the NAACP ACT-SO National Gold Medal for Music Composition.

AFFILIATIONS

For more information about Zanaida, please visit her website at:  http://www.zanaidarobles.com/