Matthew Robertson, Artistic Director
American conductor Matthew Robertson (b. 1986) is the founder and driving voice of the professional choir and orchestra The Thirteen, which he has led in more than two hundred concerts, two dozen concert tours, nine commercial recordings, and numerous world premieres. Noted for boundary-defying performances that “transfigure the listener” (The Washington Post), for his “incisive tempos and dramatic pacing” (Washington Classical Review) and “flowing lines and dramatic climaxes”(Fanfare Magazine, UK), Robertson’s vision has led to acclaimed performances of a diverse repertoire, often featuring use of staging and multimedia, and to The Thirteen’s winning the Most Creative Programming Award from the Greater Washington Area Choral Music Awards.
Angela Marroy Boerger, Managing Director
Angela Marroy Boerger is an arts administrator, musicologist, and violinist who has spent her career working to build conversations and communities around artmaking—the result of her deeply-held belief that access to an arts-rich life is a fundamental civil right. Angela joins The Thirteen from Arts Every Day in Baltimore, where she was Director of School Programs and Learning and worked with Baltimore City Public Schools to ensure equitable access to the arts for all students in the district. While at Arts Every Day, Angela founded the Baltimore Arts Integration Project, a $2.9 million US Department of Education-funded initiative.
Prior to her work in Baltimore, Angela was the Education Manager at the Metropolitan Opera, where she led the education curriculum and programming for the Met’s HD Live in Schools, an opera education and access program in 38 states across the country for over 16,000 students each year. Angela has also served as Director of Education at Westport Country Playhouse, as a Music Writer for McGraw Hill Education, and as Managing Editor of Bare Opera in New York.
Trained from youth as a violinist, Angela discovered historically-informed performance practice as a violin major at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rice in musicology and medieval studies, and pursued PhD studies in music history at Yale University, writing on Viennese opera at the end of the eighteenth century. Her wide-ranging research interests have included classical and contemporary opera and Lieder to American swing dance music and Duke Ellington. Angela currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Early Music America.
Angela lives in Maryland with her husband Tim and children Sophie Magdalena and Thaddaeus James, who are aspiring graphic novelists and paleontologists, respectively. In her free time, you can find her on sunny days working in her gardens, and in inclement weather, pursuing a never-ending list of restoration projects in her historic home.