Artistic Director

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John-Peter S. Ford is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at the University of Florida and Director of Music and Organist at Grace Presbyterian Church. He specializes in Sacred Music in the Habsburg Empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He completed the critical edition of George W. Chadwick and Robert Ayres Barnet’s comic opera Tabasco (1894).

From an early age, John-Peter sang and toured with the Mississippi Boychoir under the direction of Margaret Ewing Thomas, the Founding and Artistic Director of the choir. As an active performer, John-Peter has performed with choruses and solo works for voice in concert halls throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as well as participating in masterclasses with vocalists: Loraine Simms, William Cotton, and Laurasia Backlin. 

In March of 2024, John-Peter produced and served as musical director for the recording and subsequent performance of the critical edition of Tabasco. While at UF he has been active as President of the Student Society for Musicology. He currently serves as a Senator and School of Music Representative for the Graduate Student Union and as the Assistant to the Review Editor for the Journal of the American Musicological Association. 

John-Peter received his Bachelor’s in Music Education with a concentration in voice from Mississippi State University where he studied voice with Ryan Landis, conducting with Gary Packwood, and theory and composition with James William Sobaskie. While at MSU he sang in the Men of State, University Singers, and State Singers under Gary Packwood and Peter Infanger. 

He received a Master’s in Musicology at the University of Mississippi under the tutelage of Thomas Peattie, where he received multiple grants and scholarships for his research on Robert A. Barnet and George Chadwick’s Tabasco. While at Ole Miss he sang in the Glee Club, University Chorus, and Concert Singers under Donald Trott and Elizabeth Hearn. 

John-Peter is a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Phi Kappa Lambda. 

Christy Sallee is a pianist, music educator, and musicologist from Lakeland, FL. She is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at the University of Florida. She received her master’s degree in Piano Performance from the University of South Florida and has taught class piano, applied piano, and private piano for over 10 years.  

Christy’s performance interests and her work as an educator are both organically connected to her musicological research, with an emphasis on historically underrepresented composers and the exploration of nontraditional repertoire. Her doctoral research is centered on a series of piano works by fin-de-siècle composer Mélanie Bonis known as Femmes de légende. Her other research interests include the development of French and English pianism and Enlightenment-era women composers. Her piano teachers and mentors include Dr. Howard Kim, Dr. Miroslava Panayotova, Dr. Eunmi Ko, and Rebecca Penneys.