Joseph Béla Huszti, internationally renowned choral conductor and beloved father, teacher, and friend, died peacefully at his home in Irvine, California, on June 7, 2024, after a brief illness.

Born to a family of Hungarian origin in Ohio, on September 27, 1936, Joe distinguished himself as a gifted musician from an early age, playing violin and directing his first church choir at age 6 or 7, and he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Northwestern University. He married Melinda Murray on August 15, 1959, and that fall began his tenure at Bakersfield Junior College in central California, and their daughter Heather was born in 1960. In 1965, his Bakersfield College Choir became the first American ensemble to win first prize in the International Musical Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales—an achievement that earned them nationwide headlines and audiences with President Lyndon Johnson and Pope Paul VI. A documentary film, One Heart, One Voice, about the choir and its international adventures was produced in 2017.

He held positions at the University of Delaware,  Boston University, and the Tanglewood Summer Institute, before moving to the University of California–Irvine in 1977; he remained there until his retirement in 2016. He made 30 international choir tours with the UCI choirs and won dozens of major prizes at competitions around the world, and received the UCI Distinguished University Service Award and multiple teaching awards. In 1979, Joe and Melinda joined forces to begin the annual Madrigal Dinner tradition at UCI, complete with Renaissance costumes, knighting ceremonies, and an authentic meal topped with cups of wassail; alums who took part in the Madrigal Dinners over the course of three decades still break into song and greet each other with “Huzzah!” when they meet.

In 1997, Joe formed Men in Blaque, a select male-voice ensemble composed of UCI alums and other talented singers. Men in Blaque also made multiple international tours, and brought home prizes from such events as the World Choir Games (China, 2006), the Yeosu International Choral Competition (South Korea, 2013), and the International Musical Eisteddfod (Wales, 2017). Joe continued to conduct Men in Blaque until months before his passing.

The California Choral Directors’ Association awarded Joe its highest honor, the Howard Swan Award (named for one of Joe’s own most influential mentors), in July 2020. In March of 2024, the Western Region of the American Choral Directors’ Association named him as the honoree of its biannual conference.

Joe’s prizes and laurels, however, meant less to him than his six decades of students—their professional successes (in and out of the choral world), their personal integrity, and the multi-generational extended family they formed by virtue of having sung, sometime and somewhere, in one of his choirs. Neither he nor Melinda ever forgot the name of (or the anecdotes associated with) a former singer, and their partnership and mutual devotion made them surrogate parents for hundreds of students over the years. UCI choir alums gathered regularly for concerts, reunions, or meals at the Huszti home, and they gathered to celebrate and remember Melinda, his partner in life and music-making, after her death in December 2021.

Joe was a man of boundless curiosity, endless questions, head-spinning creativity, dizzying passions, and profound, sensitive, inspired artistry. He was a natural teacher delighted in improving people’s knowledge and skills on seemingly any topic.  He expostulated from time to time in Hungarian, made singers throw imaginary frisbees or pretend to be giant kelp, and referred regularly to his beloved Cleveland sports teams in his choral rehearsals. (He joyfully participated several times in Cleveland Guardians Fantasy Camp, where he was proud to have gotten a hit off Hall of Famer Bob Feller, who was 18 years his senior but still throwing heat.) He spent many summers on the family farm in Ohio enjoying his great nieces and nephews, perfecting his garden, blackberry picking, and giving tours of the elk farm.  He cheerfully welcomed “outsiders” to his musical table; he was proud to keep “shaking up” the choral world well into his 80s; and his artistic to-do list never ran out of items. As one former-student-turned-friend said after a visit during the last week of Joe’s life, “We all wanted to talk to him about the past. He was still talking about the future.”

Joseph Huszti was preceded in death by his wife and soulmate, Melinda. He is survived by their daughter, Heather Huszti; by his brother, Allen Huszti; by his sister-in-law, Maribelle Donaldson; by his nieces, Erin Paul and Hannah Huszti; by his nephews, Benjamin Paul and Douglas Huszti; by his grand- nieces Maggie, Emily, and Lia Huszti, Anna Adeoye, and Myra Paul, and grand- nephews Alex Huszti, Wole Adeoye, and Miller Paul;  and by the thousands of students who found their voices in his choirs.