Visionary conductor Adam Luebke is acclaimed for choral excellence and was awarded the 2020 GRAMMY® Award for Best Choral Performance by peers across the music industry. He has worked alongside many of today’s leading musicians, composers, and conductors. His work has been described as “splendid,” (Gramophone), “excellent,” (Musical America), “virtuosic,” (Buffalo News), and “articulate, unified and vividly expressive” (Chautauqua Daily).
Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus from 2015-2025, he was chorusmaster for “trailblazing” conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also prepared choruses for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the Niagara Symphony, the Western New York Chamber Orchestra, and ArtPark. Luebke has worked with conductors Rossen Milanov, Gil Rose, John Morris Russell, Carl St. Clair, Anthony Parnther, Malcolm Merriweather, Ron Spiegelman, Paul Ferrington, and Bradley Thachuk; Pulitzer Prize winning composer Paul Moravec, as well as Richard Danielpour, Chen Yi, Robert Cohen, and Fabio Luisi; and artists such as Hila Plitmann, Angela Brown, J’Nai Bridges, Kenneth Overton, Kyle van Schoonhoven, Kevin Deas, and Broadway veteran Liz Calloway. In August 2024, he joined seven time Grammy and Pultizer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in a performance of his seminal oratorio, All Rise, which was broadcast nationally on PBS. His choirs can also been seen and heard nationally on PBS in productions of Handel’s Messiah and Holiday Sounds from Fredonia; and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today.
He is chorusmaster on the Grammy-winning world premiere recording of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua on the Naxos label. Of Luebke’s most recent recording of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, Fanfare Magazine writes: “The finale erupts sonorously and flows easily…and I single out for special praise the chorus, whose members whip up a memorably bouncy and youthfully innocent sense of joy without ever sounding ponderous or portentous.”
In 2025, Luebke conducted the world premiere of Lee Hoiby’s A Whitman Symphony in collaboration with the Hoiby estate, and sell-out performances of Handel’s Messiah with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Other recent performances include Joby Talbot’s virtuoso Path of Miracles, Durufle’s Requiem, Shaw’s To the Hands, Dove’s Passing of the Year, Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories, Bach’s Magnificat, and Rheinberger’s Mass in e-flat. He recently prepared performances of Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Niagara Symphony, and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; and Debussy’s Nocturnes for the 90th anniversary concert of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Past orchestra performances include: Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Moravec’s Sanctuary Road; Mozart’s Requiem, Magic Flute, and Coronation Mass; Chichester Psalms; Verdi’s Requiem; Carmen; Carmina Burana; Brahms’ Requiem and Schicksalslied; Belshazzar’s Feast; Alexander Nevsky; Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem; Porgy and Bess; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
In 2023 Luebke made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting Vivaldi’s Magnificat and prepared the North American premiere of the Barcelona company, La Fura dels Baus’ production of Carmina Burana for ArtPark Opera. He has conducted the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Buffalo Chamber Players, and Amherst Symphony; and appeared at Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kleinhans Music Hall, the Chautauqua Institution, and the National Cathedral.
Luebke teaches at Bowling Green State University and served as Associate Professor of Voice and Choral Conducting at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He received his earliest musical training at the American Boychoir School, where he toured the world and performed on the great stages with Kurt Masur, Robert Shaw, André Previn, Kathleen Battle, Amy Grant, and more. He earned degrees from St. Olaf College, Westminster Choir College, and Florida State University; and has been a conducting fellow with Chorus America and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival of Yale University. His teachers include Anton Armstrong, Joseph Flummerfelt, Andre Thomas, Andrew Megill, and James Litton.