Emmanuel de Leon Jr., DMA Candidate (ABD), is an award-winning Filipino conductor, music educator, scholar, and advocate of contemporary choral music. He was named Outstanding Conductor at the 2nd Tokyo International Choir Competition in 2019, and is a recipient of several grants from the University of Notre Dame and the University of the Philippines (UP) Alumni Association of America and UPAA San Diego. He became a Lovelace Scholar of The Hymn Society of America and Canada in 2022.

He previously taught conducting and choral singing at the UP College of Music, where he obtained his Master’s Degree in Choral Conducting, Bachelor’s Degree and Diploma in Creative and Performing Musical Arts in Music Education. As the former conductor of the UP Manila Chorale, he led the group in winning international choral competitions and festivals in Spain, Japan, and the Philippines, as well as supporting various humanitarian organizations. At present, he is pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting at the University of Notre Dame under the tutelage of Dr. Carmen-Helena Téllez, Dr. Nancy Menk, and Dr. Mark Doerries. He is one of the 12 Dissertation Fellows in Spring 2023 of Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA).

An advocate of underrepresented composers from the Philippines and the rest of Asia, Emmanuel commissions and premieres work for choir and instrumental ensembles. In 2022, he won a grant from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and ISLA’s Graduate Student Research Awards to commission and perform the world-premiere of Eudenice Palaruan’s Pastol (Polyglot) a choral devotion based on Psalm 23, written for boy soprano, soloists, mixed choir, organ, harp, percussions, and Philippine bamboo instruments. He regularly attends masterclasses and symposia across the US, Europe and Southeast Asia as part of his life-long commitment to music education.