Joan Yakkey

Joan Yakkey, director of the Vocal Ensemble Tempus Floridum,has completed her studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music at Queens College in New York City; she has also studied musical composition at the University of California and at other Musical Institutions in Austria, France and Italy. Leo Kraft, Nadia Boulanger, Carl Orff, Hugo Weisgall, Luigi Dallapiccola, Paolo Fragapane, Guglielmo Rosati and Georg Robev were among her most influential teachers. M° Yakkey has degrees in Piano Performance, European Didactic Metodology and Choral Music and Direction from the Luigi Cherubini Music Conservatory of Florence, Italy. For over thirty-five years she taught piano at this Conservatory and for ten years she was the Director of the Conservatory’s Children’s Choir.
In 1979 M° Yakkey founded the Youth Choral Department of the Music School of Fiesole and has been coordinating almost one hundred students and three co-workers for nearly thirty years. Her students sing every year as soloists and choir members in the operas and symphonic productions at the Maggio Musicale Opera Theater of Florence.  M° Yakkey has also collected and edited Italian Traditional Songs for Children and has published them in several illustrated books all containing CD recordings of the songs. She has also developed and published five books for young children to study musical notation and a recent series entitled The Language of Music that presents sight-singing exercises for beginning choral singers of all ages.
Now retired from the Florence State Music Conservatory, Joan Yakkey desires to dedicate herself to her personal composition and musical research in the many Italian libraries.

Through the years M° Yakkey has prepared singers, arranged anonymous Early Music and conducted repertory for several CD recordings among which are: Brundibar by Hans Krasa (in Italian), Anonymous Popular Venetian Airs from the 18th century, The Little Sweep by Benjamin Britten (in Italian), Canzonette and Sacred Songs for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi, Gogo nella Jungla an illustrated children’s music book with original songs in contemporary style developed and orchestrated by Ennio Clari. La Bohème and Tosca by G. Puccini conducted by Zubin Mehta with Andrea Bocelli and the Maggio Musicale Opera Chorus and Orchestra, I Medici by Leoncavallo with Decca/Philips record company.

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