Martín Benvenuto has established himself as one of the leading treble choir conductors in the San Francisco Bay Area. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he has been Artistic Director for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus (PWC) since 2003. Active as a clinician, panelist, and guest conductor, Benvenuto also serves on the faculty of the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, and is Artistic Director of WomenSing.
Recognized for his exacting technique, compelling presence, and a passion for drawing the finest choral tone, Benvenuto’s repertoire is extensive, including great landmarks of the treble repertoire as well as works by living composers. His choirs are dedicated to commissioning new works from leading composers such as Libby Larsen, Chen Yi, Stacy Garrop, Charles Griffin, Cristián Grases, Brian Holmes, and David Conte.
His choirs have earned high marks in international competitions in Argentina, South Africa, Canada, Hungary, and Spain. Of particular note is third prize awarded to the PWC at the Béla Bártok International Choir Competition, one of the most competitive and prestigious in the European circuit. Benvenuto highly values artistic collaborations: his choirs have collaborated with Veljo Tormis, Joseph Jennings, Karmina Silec, Charles Bruffy, California Shakespeare Theater, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus.
Benvenuto has prepared choirs for organizations such as the San Francisco Opera, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Redwood Symphony, and the Kronos Quartet, and for works such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Monteverdi’s Vespers, Britten’s St. Nicholas, Mahler’s Third Symphony, Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s Mass, and Orff’s Carmina Burana.
An accomplished singer as well, Benvenuto has appeared as a tenor soloist in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Vivaldi’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Requiem, Bach’s Cantata BWV 61, Beethoven’s Mass in C, Ramirez’s Misa Criolla, and others. As a member of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, he sang with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic under the batons of Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Helmuth Rilling, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Joseph Flummerfelt.
Benvenuto holds a D.M.A. in choral conducting from Boston University, where he studied with Ann Howard Jones and the late Robert Shaw. He earned his master’s degree from Westminster Choir College, majoring both in Choral Conducting and Voice Performance and Pedagogy, studying under Joseph Flummerfelt, Elem Eley and Julia Kemp. His undergraduate degrees in choral conducting and composition are from the Universidad Católica Argentina.
Irina Behrendt is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she earned a Graduate Diploma in piano performance. She also holds a MM in piano performance from the Petrozavodsk State Conservatory (Petrozavodsk, Russia) and a BM in piano performance and pedagogy from the Rachmaninoff College of Music (Kaliningrad, Russia). Having grown up in a musical family, Irina has always had a passion for collaborative playing and started her professional career as a performer and accompanist with the Kaliningrad Philharmonic Society and as a staff accompanist for the Kaliningrad Rachmaninoff College of Music.
Irina immigrated to the US in 1998 and since then has been fortunate to study piano and chamber music under such masters as Patricia Zander, Benjamin Zander, Vladimir Feltsman, Stephen Drury, William Corbett-Jones, Boromeo String Quartet, and the Alexander String Quartet. Irina is currently on the faculty of the New Mozart School of Music in Palo Alto, an accompanist for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus, and choir accompanist for the CUMC in Half Moon Bay.