Join us for our Annual Meeting at St. John’s High School to launch Music Worcester’s 2025-2026 Season. Immediately following the meeting will be a cabaret performance by Broadway star Rebecca Robbins , accompanied by Chris Shepard , the Artistic Director of The Worcester Chorus and THE COMPLETE BACH. A reception will take place immediately following the performance.

The event is free to attend and open to all, though reservations are required.

Annual Meeting:4:30 pm
Cabaret Performance:5:00 pm
Reception:6:00 pm

Rebecca Robbins is a Broadway actress, headliner vocalist, cabaret artist, cancer survivor, and co-host of the podcast series  Historically Speaking . She has been seen on Broadway in  A Tale of Two Cities (original Broadway cast) and The Phantom of The Opera  (3 years on Broadway, 2 years on tour) as well as in theatres across North America, including The Kennedy Center, Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre and the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

Off-Broadway, Rebecca has performed in the City Center Encores! revivals of Fiorello! ,  Fanny, Music In The Air, The New Moon  and  The Pajama Game  as well as the New York Philharmonic’s critically acclaimed production of  My Fair Lady , starring Kelsey Grammer. She also created the role of The Vocalist in The New Group’s production of Wallace Shawn’s world premier play/opera,  The Music Teacher , starring opposite Marc Blum, a performance which can be heard on Bridge Records. On the concert stage, she has appeared with numerous symphony orchestras and has also been a headliner for the American Cancer Society’s Hope Gala Honolulu, The Great Waters Music Festival in New Hampshire, and the Nantucket Arts Council’s Downtown Concert Series. Additionally, she has written and performed multiple solo cabaret concerts in cities across America.

Rebecca has performed leading roles in theatres throughout the country including 24 shows at America’s oldest theatre, the Walnut Street Theatre, also Sacramento Music Circus, 1812 Productions, Bristol Riverside Theatre, Pittsburgh CLO, Baltimore Center Stage, Maine State Music Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Riverside Theatre, Media Theatre, Fulton Theatre, and Prince Music Theatre. Some of her favorite roles include Marie (the Fairy Godmother) in  Cinderella , Louise in  Always, Patsy Cline, Ursula in  The Little Mermaid , Paulette in  Legally Blonde , Mrs. Banks in  Mary Poppins , Florence Foster Jenkins in  Souvenir , and Carlotta Giudicelli in  The Phantom of The Opera .

A true mountain mama from West Virginia, Rebecca received a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Charleston and also studied voice at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. An American classic film aficionado and collector of antique 5-finger vases, she spends much of her time in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire as well as her home in Philadelphia, but no matter where she is, Rebecca will always be a West Virginia girl at heart.

Now in his fifteenth year as conductor of the Worcester Chorus, Chris Shepard also serves as Artistic Director of the Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA), the state’s oldest professional choir, and the Masterwork Chorus of New Jersey. His choirs have collaborated with a number of orchestras, such as the Juilliard Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, in venues that include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall in New York, as well as the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Chris has prepared choirs for major international conductors, including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simone Young, Carlos Miguel Prieto and William Boughton, as well as for Broadway legend Patti Lupone and Ray Davies of the Kinks. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2015, and made his conducting debut with the New Haven Symphony in 2016. Chris returned to America in 2008 after a dozen years in Sydney, Australia, where he founded the Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra.

He led their BACH 2010, a project to perform all of Bach’s choral cantatas. Under his direction, the ensemble performed over eighty cantatas, as well as the two Passions, B Minor Mass, and Christmas Oratorio; they completed the cantata cycle in 2013. In addition to the music of J.S. Bach, Chris has conducted many staples of the choral-orchestral repertoire, and he has commissioned and premiered a number of new choral works in both Australia and America. He also leads two of the longest-running annual Messiah performances in America, with the Worcester Chorus and at Carnegie Hall with the Masterwork Chorus.

A committed music educator, Chris has served on the faculty of the Taft School, Sydney Grammar School, Hotchkiss Summer Portals, and Holy Cross College. He founded the Litchfield County Children’s Choir in 1990, and has conducted numerous middle and high school festival choirs in New England, New York and Australia. He presented two documentaries with SBS-TV, an Australian national public television network, and has given several presentations at conferences for American Choral Directors Association and Australian National Kodàly Association. Chris has been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its four-decade Bach cantata project, and he currently serves as Music Director of St John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut. He led the Dessoff Choir in New York City from 2010 to 2016.

A pianist and keyboard continuist, Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School, the Yale School of Music (where he studied choral conducting with Marguerite Brooks) and the University of Sydney. He researched the performance history of Bach’s B Minor Mass in New York City for his PhD in Musicology; his dissertation won the American Choral Directors Association’s 2012 Julius Herford Prize for outstanding doctoral thesis in choral music.