Ed Frazier Davis, founder and director of the Institute for Choral Creativity, is an English-American composer, baritone, and conductor living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Described as "at once deeply emotional and sublime" (KC Arts Beat) and lauded for its "compelling, […] colourful orchestration" (Musical Toronto), Ed's music is polystylistic and draws from many eclectic influences, from Renaissance madrigals and Anglican church music to postminimalism and video game music. He has composed for a wide variety of media, but as an experienced singer he has a particularly strong affinity for writing for choirs. His compositions have been commissioned and performed throughout the world by many renowned performers and organizations, including Access Contemporary Music, the ACDA National Convention, the Aspen Music Festival, The Crossing, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, PLEXUS, and the Toronto Children's Chorus. He has been named a winner or finalist in numerous contests, including the American Prize in Choral Composition, Chanticleer's Student Composer Competition, the Missouri Composer's Project, and the Young New Yorkers' Chorus's Composition Competition. Ultimately, he seeks to write music that breaks established artistic binaries—e.g. traditional vs. modern, accessible vs. unfamiliar—to create art that is fulfilling to as wide an audience as possible.

Ed has studied composition at Knox College, the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, primarily with Marta Ptaszyńska, Kyong Mee Choi, Stacy Garrop, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, and Zhou Long. He has studied voice with Sarah Moran, Stacey Tappan, Jim Collins, Gianna Rolandi, and Vinson Cole.

Dr. William Baker, executive consultant for the Institute for Choral Creativity, has earned a reputation as an entrepreneurial conductor and creator of choral organizations.

In 1990 he established the William Baker Choral Foundation, which has created over a dozen ensembles based in three states, involving hundreds of singers during the course of any year. His choirs have performed for numerous conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the National Association for Music Education, and the American Guild of Organists, in addition to the 1982 World’s Fair and music festivals in the United States and Great Britain, most notably appearances before capacity audiences at Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival since 1989. He has led the Festival Singers in the production of 25 nationally released recordings and in television and radio appearances across the nation, including The First Art, The Sounds of Majesty and National Public Radio’s Performance Today.

An Atlanta native, Dr. Baker studied voice and choral conducting at Mercer University and the University of Georgia before culminating his formal education at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago where he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting.  His accomplishments have been recognized in his home states through proclamations by two Georgia Governors, Joe Frank Harris and Sonny Purdue, by Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer, by United States Congressman Phil Gingrey, by proclamations from the cities of Kansas City, MO and Roeland Park, KS, by the Johnson County (KS) Commission, and by a 2015 proclamation by the State of Georgia House of Representatives.  In 2012 he was honored for his contributions to the cultural life of his hometown by the Pro-Mozart Society of Atlanta.  In 2015 he was named Conductor Emeritus of The DeKalb Choral Guild.

For more information contact efdavis@festivalsingers.org