She is a singer, choral director, artistic director and music teacher who earned her BA at the State University of New York at Binghamton, her Masters in Music Education at the Manhattan School of Music and her Doctorate in music education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
In 1984 she became the founder of the Glass Menagerie community chorus based in Greenwich Village which stemmed from the three children’s choruses and an adult chorus she put together after she had started as a teacher at Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York. Since then the chorus has grown to be a 50-voice community chorus.
She is on the faculty of the New York University Summer Kodaly Institute and was a teacher at the Gateway School of New York which was a special setting for children with disabilities for several years. She has also been a vocal teacher and choral director at the LREI Middle and High Schools. She is a co-founder of the Kodaly Organisation of New York and was a board member of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators (OAKE) for two years. She was the conductor of the OAKE National Women’s Chorus in 2017 and two years previous she had been the recipient of the 2015 OAKE Outstanding Educator Award. She is also a clinician and guest conductor who is regularly called on through the United States.
Her students have taken part in concerts broadcast by PBS, with Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary at Carnegie Hall and as a singer herself she has performed and recorded with ensembles such as the Robert DeCormier Singers and Cerdorrion vocal chamber ensemble.
Recordings she has performed on or worked on include Christmas Eve, The First Nowell and A Victorian Christmas by the Robert DeCormier Singers, Peter, Paul & Mommy Too and Around the Campfire by Peter, Paul and Mary and A Celebration of Sensuality – Baroque and Renaissance Vocal Settings of the Song of Songs by The Sine Nomine Singers.
Robert DeCormier Singers and Ensemble recordings
Blessed Be That Maid Mary (Traditional 15thC English/George Ratcliffe Woodward)
Arabesque Z6525 (CD – A Victorian Christmas’)
Conductor and arranger – Robert DeCormier
Carols Medley – Merry Christmas (Traditional)/Dame Get Up and Bake Your Pies (Traditional English)/Everywhere, Everywhere Christmas Tonight (Phillips Brooks/Lewis Henry Redner)
Arabesque 6526 (CD: The First Nowell)
Arranger/Conductor – Robert DeCormier
Organ/Piano – David Ralph
Jingle Bells (as “One Horse Open Sleigh”) (James Lord Pierpoint)
Arabesque 6526 (A Victorian Christmas)
Conductor – Robert DeCormier
Soloist – David Dusing
Soloist – Maureen Haley
Soloist – Richard Scott
Soloist – Sandra Arida
Sources:
- https://www.glassmenagerie.org/artistic-leadership
- https://www.glassmenagerie.org/
- https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/susan-glass
- https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/theater/the-events-uses-local-choirs-for-vocals-minus-a-script.html
- https://briefnytw.tumblr.com/post/113090109357/name-the-glass-menagerie-location-new-york
- https://www.lrei.org/curriculum-detail?LevelNum=1017&DepartmentId=17704
- https://www.allmusic.com/artist/susan-glass-mn0002295561/credits
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/2210971-Susan-Glass