All-State Treble Chorus Conductor

ARGINE SAFARI is the Director of Choirs at Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale and the Director of Music/Organist at the Christ Lutheran Church in Woodcliff Lake, NJ. Under Mrs. Safari’s direction, Pascack Valley choirs earned numerous awards and accolades, traveling nationally from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, CA, and internationally to Canada, Italy, and Ireland, where their renditions of Irish songs were played on the national radio. Mrs. Safari has been active as a vocal coach, clinician, conductor, a collaborative pianist, Director of Music (having conducted more than 30 musicals), and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, or Zankel Hall, among others. She has conducted the Bergen County Choir, the Rockland County Choir, the All-State Opera Chorus, and has worked as a clinician with choirs nationally and internationally. Prior to Pascack Valley, Mrs. Safari was a conductor and pianist at the Grammy award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the children chorus of choice for top orchestras and recording artists from Beyonce & Elton John to The NY Philharmonic & John Adams.

In 2013, Mrs. Safari co-founded a non-profit New Jersey youth theater arts company, Stage Scene and Song Performing Arts (3SPA), with the mission to transform and empower its participants through the arts, and was instrumental in the success of the program which received generous grants from The Winifred M. & George P. Pitkin Foundation and was nominated for several youth theater awards. From January-June 2017, Mrs. Safari served as an educational consultant at the NJ State Department of Education, contributing to the development of the Title I Arts Integration grants program and initiating the ECET2 conference in Princeton, which for the first time focused on the arts education.

Mrs. Safari was named the 2010 Princeton University’s Distinguished Scholar, the 2015-2016 Bergen County Teacher of the Year, the 2017 NJ State Teacher of the Year, the 2017 Evangelina Menendez Trailblazer, the 19th Congressional district inaugural Hometown Hero, the 2018 Lowell Milken Fellow, the 2018 NEA Foundation Awardee for Teaching Excellence, and the 2018 NJEA Art Teacher of the Year. In 2020, Mrs. Safari was featured in Dr. Bilha Fish’s book Invincible Women: Conversations with 21 Inspiring and Successful American Immigrants.

A winner of the US Fulbright Distinguished Teacher Award in 2019, Mrs. Safari taught and conducted music education research at the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, Finland. From January-July 2019, she presented masterclasses, clinics and seminars, conducted choirs, and facilitated round-table discussions in Finland (Espoo, Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Turku, Vantaa), Russia (Moscow and Sochi), France (Paris), and Germany (Karlsruhe, Erding, and Munich). Mrs. Safari’s most favorite thing in the world is providing her students with the keys —both major and minor—to find their own perfect pitch.

2023 All-State Treble Chorus Program

Mrs. Argine Safari, Conductor

James Lubrano, Accompanist

Caritas Abundat .......................................................

Dixit Dominus, 1st Movement .....................................

Bird’s Lullaby

Michael John Trotta

Baldassare Galuppi

Sarah Quartel

Muusika ...........................................................................

Celtic Mouth Music ......................................

Part Uusberg

Dolores Keane/John Faulkner

There Will Come Soft Rains ...............................................

Still I Rise ................................................................

Kevin Memley

Rosephanye Powell