Allan Friedman is the Artistic Director of the Women’s Voices Chorus of Chapel Hill, NC.    From 2004-2012 he served as Assistant/Associate Conductor of the Duke Chapel Choir and director of the Duke Vespers Ensemble and the Divinity School Choir. 

Allan is also an active music educator in the Raleigh/Durham area, working with students of all age and talent levels in both sacred and secular settings.

Originally from Duluth, Minnesota, Allan earned his BA in music at Duke where he studied conducting with Rodney Wynkoop. In the fall of 1997, he studied at the University of Natal, Durban in South Africa where he learned choral music from Joseph Shabalala, leader of Ladysmith Black Mombazo, renowned for their work on Paul Simon’s album Graceland.

In 2001, he graduated with a Masters Degree in Musicology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he wrote his thesis on South African choral competitions. While at UNC he also conducted the Collegium Musicum, the Harambe Choir, and was assistant conductor of the Carolina Choir.

In the spring of 2005 Allan earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts from Boston University where he studied conducting with Ann Howard Jones and David Hoose. During his time at BU he conducted the BU Women’s Chorus and the BU Repertory Chorus and wrote his dissertation on Russian Jewish Choral Music from St. Petersburg circa 1905-1925. While in Boston, he also found time to be the music director of both First Parish Unitarian/Universalist Church in Canton, Massachusetts and of the Harbour Choral Arts Society in Hanover, Massachusetts, as well as assistant conduct The Zamir Chorale of Boston as the Mary Wolfman Epstein Conducting Fellow.

In addition to conducting, Dr. Friedman has studied composition with Marjorie Merryman at Boston University and Steven Jaffe at Duke University and has had several performances of his choral compositions, most notably his Holocaust Cantata “With Perfect Faith.”