About Us
(photo by Tomasz Zakrzewski)A native Detroiter, Joseph Herter, a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music, has been living in Poland since 1974. Prior to relocating to Poland, he worked as music director and teacher at several Catholic parishes, including Old St. Mary’s in Greektown and served on the Detroit Archdiocesan Ecumenical Commission under the direction of the late Msgr. John Bradley. For the past 36 years he has been living in Warsaw, working as a teacher, conductor and musicologist, and since 2006, as the Polish representative for the New York-based Kosciuszko Foundation, Inc. As an educator, Herter taught for many years at the American School of Warsaw. As a conductor, he has worked with over a dozen professional orchestras throughout Poland, including the Warsaw Philharmonic. This autumn he will enter his 22nd season as a conductor at the Teatr Rozrywki in Chorzów in Upper Silesia where he conducts such musicals as Oliver, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof . In addition to the long affiliation with Cantores Minores at Warsaw’s Archdiocesan Cathedral , he has also been music director at the Warsaw International Church for over 25 years. As a musicologist he has been responsible in great part for the revival of interest in the music of the Polish-American Post-Romantic composer Zygmunt Stojowski. He is the author of a highly acclaimed biography on the composer which was published in 2007 by the Polish Music Center (Figueroa Press), University of Southern California. Herter has been the recipient honors and awards from the Polish Ministry of Culture, the City of Warsaw, the Detroit City Council, the Polish Union of Choirs and Orchestras (PZChiO), Polish Singers Alliance of America, and Poland’s National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa).
