Artistic Director Linda Blanchard

St. Cecilia Chamber Choir Artistic Director Linda Blanchard earned her MA in Choral Conducting from University of Michigan School of Music, Ann Arbor, and her BA in Music from Bowdoin College. She is recipient of the Susan Winchell Burnett Music Prize, the Abraham Goldberg Prize for theatrical directing and the St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award. She studied orchestral conducting with Gustav Meier and Zae Munn, and choral conducting with Theodore Morrison, Jerry Blackstone, and Robert Greenlee. Ms. Blanchard is founding director of St. Cecilia Chamber Choir, directs the Sheepscot Valley Chorus and is Director of Choirs at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Newcastle. She has worked as a festival adjudicator and clinician, directed the Bowdoin College Chamber Choir, University of Michigan Residential College Choirs and Orpheus Singers, worked in Maine and Michigan as a church organist and choir director, taught junior high and high school chorus in Maine, taught voice at Bowdoin College, and worked extensively as a musical theater director.

Assistant Artistic Director and Accompanist Sean Fleming

Sean Fleming is an in-demand keyboard artist, accompanist, and arranger. He performs regularly with the Bowdoin Chorus, Down East Singers, Lincoln Academy Lincolnaires, Lincoln Festival Chorus, Midcoast Community Chorus, St. Cecilia Chamber Choir, Sheepscot Valley Chorus, and Tapestry Singers. He performs regularly with his two bands, the Sean Fleming Ragtime Band, and the Sean Fleming Dixieland Band. He is on the roster of the Amethyst Chamber Ensemble, and is a member of the Maine Friends of Music chamber ensemble. He is a member of the newly-formed professional vocal ensemble, Butterscotch Sock Hop. He was recently the music director for the Hearts Ever Young troupe. He regularly accompanies many high school and junior high festivals. He has worked with Ann Arbor Camerata, Bowdoin Chamber Choir, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival Chorus, Coastal Chorale, Colby College Chorale, Maine Pro Musica, Oratorio Chorale, Renaissance Voices, University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society, University of Southern Maine Chorale, University of Southern Maine Chamber Singers, and Vox Nova Chamber Choir.

Sean Fleming has directed or accompanied over eighty musical theater productions nationwide. He has served as the music director, orchestra conductor, and accompanist for Heartwood Regional Theater Company‘s productions of “Big River,” “Into the Woods,” “Man of La Mancha,” “The Secret Garden,” and many others. With the Watts Hall Community Players he was the music director for “Once Upon A Mattress,” “The Pirates of Penzance,” “The Music Man,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” the premiere of the new musical “Count Me In!,” and most recently “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

A piano and organ recitalist who has performed throughout the United States, Mr. Fleming studied organ and piano with Ray Cornils, John Doney, Michael Lindsey, and Gerald McGee. For the past twenty-nine years he has served as organist at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newcastle. Over his long career he has played for Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Congregational, Methodist, and Baptist services.

He was the recipient of a 2009 St. Botolph Club Foundation grant award.