Giselle Wyers (she/her/hers) is the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor of Choral Music at the University of Washington, where she conducts the award-winning University Chorale and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in choral conducting and music education. Upcoming projects include serving as Head Jury Member for the 2025 Busan International Choral Festival (Korea), and in May 2026, an appearance in Carnegie Hall conducting the premiere of The Lips of the Sky (a choral cycle for chorus and string orchestra). Sabbatical research in Spring 2025 included a presentation at The Trinity Laban School in London. In 2024 UW Choirs enjoyed a four-country tour of Central Europe.​ 

 

University of Washington Chorale, consisting of majors from across the UW campus, regularly seeks out interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations, such as their Cherry Blossom Celebration concert with renowned taiko drummer Kenji Shomeda, singing backup for Andrea Bocelli in Climate Pledge Arena and experimental pop artist Imogen Heap in Benaroya Hall, art installations amplifying the work of Josh Faught and Presidential Medalist for the Arts Ann Hamilton, as well as numerous concerts with the Seattle Symphony POPS. University Chorale was selected to perform at the ACDA NW Regional Conference in 2024. They join UW Chamber Singers and Seattle University Choirs in a performance of Considering Matthew Shepard at the 2026 NW ACDA Regional Conference. Four CDs are available to stream including their newest entitled Chasing Daybreak.​

 

Wyers conducts Concord Chamber Choir, an auditioned adult chorus within the Columbia Choirs consortium, currently holding finalist status for The American Prize's community chorus category. Concord relishes the opportunity to workshop with living composers, creating fresh interpretations; recent collaborators include Eriks Esenvalds, Timothy Takach, Moira Smiley, Robert Kyr and Katerina Gimon. Her professional project choir, Solaris Vocal Ensemble, released their debut album through Albany Music (made possible in part by a generous grant from the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund). Floodsongs features new commissions from American luminaries Meredith Monk, Ingram Marshall, Anne LeBaron and Frances White, winning the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music in 2018.​

 

Wyers’ work with educational honor choirs and all-state choruses is extensive, taking her to New York (Lincoln Center), Kansas, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, Connecticut, Nebraska, Texas, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, Texas and Vancouver, Canada. She has conducted semi-professional ensembles across the United States and in Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, and Sweden, and lectured on conducting pedagogy at Sweden’s Örebro Universitet, European Festival of Church Music (Germany), Latvian Academy of Music, Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, Westminster Choir College, University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Portland State University. 

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Choral compositions by Wyers are featured in the GIA’s 2025 publication Choral Music by Women Composers, edited Apfelstadt and Davis. Her intent is to compose accessible, educational level literature that does not sacrifice in quality, challenging yet inspiring choruses with fresh harmonies and carefully crafted text settings. Some works expose current societal and environmental issues, while others seek to offer a place for choruses to ponder the beauty, mystery and heartbreak we all experience as citizens in a complicated world. Her works appear with Santa Barbara Music Publishing Company’s "Giselle Wyers Choral Series," as well as with GIA, MusicSpoke, earthsongs and Hildegard Publishing. Performances have occurred across the United States (including Carnegie Hall 2017 and 2022 and 2019’s ACDA National Conference), Canada, Australia, Cuba, and China, most countries in South America and many European cities. In 2022, she served as composer-in-residence for the Greater Seattle Choral Consortium's annual festivities celebrating the return to in-person singing (sponsored by Consortio).

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Wyers enjoys mentoring choral scholars and those seeking international exchanges, as evidenced by her work on the editorial board of ACDA’s Choral Journal and their Standing Committee on International Activities.