Meet Meray Boustani and Dr. David Howard, featured soloists for Brahms’ Requiem

“Sung fetchingly” was the description The New York Times gave Meray Boustani’s performance of Berlin Songs composed by, fellow native Tulsan, Noam Faingold. She has been engaged as a soprano soloist with Tulsa Chorale in performances of Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, The Celestial Country by Charles Ives, Handel’s Messiah and Solomon, Maria und Johannes by Johann Schulz, and Haydn’s Stabat Mater. Other concert performances include Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, Fauré’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, and Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. An enthusiastic recitalist, some recital highlights include Buxtehude’s Singet dem Herrn, Heil’ge Nacht and Osterlied by Josef Rheinberger, Louis Spohr’s Sechs Deutsche Lieder, Three Shakespeare Songs by Amy Beach, Ned Rorem’s Last Poems of Wallace Stevens, and Emerald Songs by Romanos Melikian. Ms. Boustani has had the opportunity to collaborate with some of Tulsa’s finest artists including the late poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko in Between the City of Yes and the City of No, Trio Aleszky in the University of Arkansas’ KUAF/ Fulbright Chamber Music Festival, Whitney Hollis and Cathy Venable in Saint John’s Music at Midday series, Lyndon Meyer in the University of Tulsa’s Brown Bag It series, and Joseph Arndt and the Oklahoma Bach Choir as soprano soloist in BWV 1, 4, 10, 51, 62, 140, and 147.

Dr. David Howard is the Associate Director of Choral Activities at the University of Oklahoma, where he conducts the Men’s Glee Club and Women’s Chorus in addition to teaching graduate and undergraduate choral literature and choral conducting. He also coordinates the annual Young Men’s Vocal Workshop and Women’s Choral Leadership Workshop for secondary school singers. He is the founder and artistic director of Schola Cantorum Oklahoma, a professional ensemble dedicated to the performance of early music, and is the conductor of Voce Fortis, a newly formed choir for secondary school young men. His collegiate choirs, civic choruses, opera choruses, church choirs, and secondary school choirs have been hailed for their beauty of tone, artistry, and clarity of diction; he is in demand as a choral clinician and adjudicator. His choirs have performed across the USA and in Italy, Poland, Ireland, and Austria. The OU Women’s Chorus performed by invitation at the Oklahoma Music Educators Association annual conference in 2018, and will do so again in 2024. Their recently released album Voces in Concordia is available on all streaming services. As a baritone, Dr. Howard also maintains an active freelance performance schedule domestically and internationally in professional choirs, as a recitalists, and in oratorio productions. His album of sacred works for voice, harp and piano entitled Consecration on the Blue Griffin label is available on Apple Music and on Amazon Music. His scholarly writing and musical editions have been published in both the USA and the UK.