Dr. Joseph Amante y Zapata is the director of Choral Activities at the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), where he conducts both the CCRI Chamber Singers and Chorus. He also serves as chair of the Performing Arts Department.
He is also an adjunct instructor of Latin and Caribbean music history and previously served as the Chorus director 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. A current project involves the co-editing of Handel’s Messiah into Spanish.
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 assistant music director of the Ocean State Pops Orchestra (OSPO), mandolist and assistant conductor of L'Esperance Mandolin Ensemble, as well as community member-at-large for Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra (NaBSCO).
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).