Juan Pedro Gaffney, 80, of Sebastopol, has been appointed to the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board by Governor Brown.

Gaffney has been a member of the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board since 2017 and director at Coro Hispano de San Francisco since 1975.

He was director of Hispanic liturgy at Mission Dolores from 1993 to 2008 and was the first artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Gaffney was an associate professor of philosophy at St. Joseph’s College and a lecturer at Saint Mary’s College from 1972 to 1996.

Gaffney is a vice president of the Instituto Pro Música de California.

He has been researching, editing, teaching and performing the choral music of Latin America, Spain and Portugal for the past 35 years.

He received early choral training from local maestros Herbert Bergman, Leonard Fitzpatrick, Richard Irven Purvis, Sergei Konstantinov and Waldemar Jacobsen, later earning advanced degrees in music from the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University.

His discovery of the classical and folk repertories of Latin America while working in Venezuela in the mid-60’s proved key in determining the path of his career.

In 1975 he founded the Coro Hispano de San Francisco and Conjunto Nuevo Mundo, and conjointly, the Instituto Pro Música’s Musicological Research Program, through which he has transcribed and/or edited more than 100 works by New World Renaissance and Baroque masters.

Maestro Gaffney also serves as Director of Hispanic Liturgy at the Basilica of Mission San Francisco de Asís.

He does not have any background in workers’ compensation. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $147,778. Gaffney is a Democrat.