Dr. Joseph Amante y Zapata is chair of the Performing Arts Department at CCRI, where, as director of choral activities, he conducts the CCRI Chamber Singers. He is an adjunct instructor of Latin and Caribbean music history and is past director of Chorus at Roger Williams University. Amante's choirs have participated in choral competitions and festivals at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with the Boston Pro Musica in Boston, MA, and at New York’s Carnegie Hall. His choral interests include music of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, of which he has transcribed several Salve Reginas and Magnificats, and other Spanish works.In Spring 2024, Amante received the Faculty Innovation Fund Award from the CCRI Foundation. He is the recipient of a scholarship from the Herb Alpert Foundation, an Administrative Fellow of Harvard University and received a grant from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. While in college, he sang in choirs under Robert Shaw, Zubin Mehta, Rafael Kubelick, Alfred Schnittke, Riccardo Muti (see), and played percussion under John Cage.Amante has studied with Joseph Flummerfelt, James H. Vail, Rodney Eichenberger, John Glenn Paton, Morton Lauridsen, John Moriarty and Daniel Pinkham. He has also performed orchestral work with Hans Beer, Pascal Verrot, Carl St. Clair and Leonard Bernstein at Seranak (Tanglewood).Dr. Amante has been an officer of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), both in California and Massachusetts, and is past president of Rhode Island ACDA. He has been an accompanist for music instructors as well as a part-time pianist and vocal soloist at various churches throughout Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He is a violist and past assistant music director of the Ocean State Pops Orchestra (OSPO), mandolist and past assistant conductor of L'Esperance Mandolin Ensemble, as well as past community member-at-large for Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra (NaBSCO). Amante became a 2024 fellow at CCRI and with a grant produced, "Zarzuelas, Canciones y Mariachi", an exploration of Hispanic and Latin American music.A native of San Diego, CA, Dr. Amante moved to New England to pursue his master’s degree in Choral Conducting at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He met his wife, Terry, while living there. His family came to South Kingstown, Rhode Island in 2001, when she became a professor at the School of Education at URI.Fun fact, Dr. Amante is the great grand-nephew of the Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata.