08/05/2026
With the 2026-2027 school year approaching, we want to welcome our newest faculty member, Laura Clapp!
Conductor, soprano, and violinist Laura Clapp is thrilled to be joining the faculty at Wilmington College as Assistant Professor of Music and director of the Wilmington Chorale. Laura has directed choirs in such varied places as prisons, college campuses, churches, and homeless communities, most recently as a graduate student instructor at the University of Michigan.
While at Michigan, Laura directed Out of the Blue, a choir of undergraduate students and community members that performed at local prisons, and led a weekly music workshop for women incarcerated at the Washtenaw County Jail. Laura received the 2025 Presser Graduate Music Award, which supported her research on prison choirs in the US and UK, and presented at the 2026 Midwest ACDA conference on a panel of prison choir practitioners. As a recipient of a 2026 Arts Initiative Grant, Laura conducted a performance of “Considering Matthew Shepard” with University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members.
Prior to her graduate studies, Laura worked with Voices of Hope, a Minnesota-based prison choir organization, as a recipient of the Yale Glee Club Service Through Music Fellowship. While in Minnesota, Laura also co-directed StreetSong, a choir for people who have experienced homelessness. She has previously been a researcher for the New Muses Project, helping build their database of marginalized composers, and a soprano and teaching artist with Border CrosSing, a professional choir that uplifts rarely-performed music from Latin America.
Laura holds a Master of Music degree in choral conducting from the University of Michigan, where she was a proud student of Dr. Eugene Rogers, and a B.A. from Yale University.
