Philadelphia Bach Institute

Artistic Staff

Robert Duff (Institute Director)

Robert Duff is the director of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth Chamber Singers, and teaches courses in music theory within the Music Department. He has served on the faculties of Pomona College, Claremont Graduate University, Mount St. Mary’s College, and as Director of Music for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He holds degrees in conducting, piano and voice from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Temple University, and the University of Southern California, where he earned the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in 2000.

An active commissioner of new music, he has given several world premieres of works for both orchestral and choral forces. In addition to his work with choirs nationally, he was recently appointed Councilor to the New Hampshire Council on the Arts by Governor John Lynch, and is on the executive board of the Eastern Division of the American Choral Directors Association.

 

Wayne Abercrombie (Conducting Coach)

Wayne Abercrombie is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His degrees are from Westminster Choir College (B.M. and M.M.) and Indiana University (D.Mus with Highest Honors). He has been Assistant Conductor and/or Chorus Director of symphony orchestras in Johnstown (PA), Elkhart (IN) and Springfield (MA). Prior to this tenure at the University of Massachusetts, he held teaching and conducting positions at West Georgia College, Indiana University at South Bend and Williams College, and was guest conductor, teacher or lecturer at the University of Iowa, Boston University and Temple University.

His appearances as guest conductor include festival choruses and orchestras throughout New England, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Pennsylvania, as well as the Five College Orchestra, the Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestra and both of its youth orchestras. He has lectured, conducted clinics, taught in and served as consultant to colleges, high schools and churches, and at conferences of the American Guild of Organists, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). He served on the Executive Boards of the Conductors Guild and the Massachusetts Music Educators Association.

Lawrence Doebler (Presenter)
 

Lawrence Doebler is Professor of Music at Ithaca College where he serves as Director of Choral Activities. Currently in his 27th year at the College, his duties include conducting the Choir, Madrigal Singers, and Choral Union and teaching conducting (both undergraduate courses and graduate majors), choral techniques, and choral literature. In 1979, Professor Doebler established the Ithaca College Choral Festival and Contest, an endeavor that has commissioned over 25 new choral works, spawned several thousand entries in the choral composition contest, and provided a forum for excellent high school choirs to perform over 120 compositions.

Doebler has received awards for research and teaching excellence from the University of Wisconsin and Ithaca College and has appeared throughout the Eastern and Midwestern United States as a clinician and guest conductor. As an editor of "no barline" Renaissance music, Doebler's editions are published by the Lorenz Company in the Roger Dean catalogue. In addition to his academic appointments, he has served as director of music at churches in Cleveland, St. Louis, Madison, and Ithaca. Currently, he is the music director for the Cayuga Vocal Ensemble, a professional chamber choir.

 

Alan Harler (Conducting Coach)

Alan Harler serves as Laura H. Carnell Professor and Chairman of Choral Music at Temple University`s Boyer College of Music and Dance. He is an active conductor outside of Philadelphia, having performed regularly at the Festival Casals in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Aspen Choral Institute, and has given master classes and conducted performances in Taiwan and China under the sponsorship of the Taiwan Philharmonic Association. In 1988, Alan Harler was named music director of Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, only the twelfth person to hold that position in the chorus’s 133-year history.

Alan Harler is a strong advocate for new American music. He was founder and director of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble of Indiana. During his tenure with Mendelssohn Club, he has commissioned and premiered thirty-three new compositions, including such major works as Cynthia Folio’s Touch the Angel’s Hand (1994), Jan Krzywicki’s Lute Music (1995), James Primosch’s Fire Memory/River Memory (1998), Charles Fussell’s High Bridge (2003), and Andrea Clearfield’s The Golem Psalms (2006). He conducted Mendelssohn Club in a critically acclaimed recording of the Moran Requiem for Argo/London Records in 1994.  Harler has prepared choruses for many of the country’s leading conductors, including Riccardo Muti, Klaus Tennstedt, Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, and Wolfgang Sawallisch.

 

Edward Maclary (Conducting Coach)

Edward Maclary became Director of Choral Activities at the University of Maryland in September 2000 and was named Professor of Music in 2006. Prior to coming to Maryland he served on the faculties of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Bowling Green State University. Choirs under his direction have toured throughout the United States and Canada and have sung by invitation at the Music Educators National Conference and the American Choral Directors Association.

In addition to leading the graduate studies program in choral conducting, Edward Maclary conducts the University Chorale and the Chamber Singers, two of the School of Music's seven full-time choral ensembles. Regarded as an outstanding clinician and teacher, Maclary maintains an active schedule as guest conductor for choral festivals and honors choirs throughout the country. Edward Maclary received his doctoral degree in conducting with honors in 1985 from Indiana University after having been awarded a graduate degree in musicology from Boston University. In the following years he worked closely on many projects with Robert Shaw and also studied and collaborated with Helmuth Rilling, Margaret Hillis and Robert Page.

Douglas Miller

Douglas Miller was a member of the School of Music faculty at Penn State University from 1969 to 2001. During that time he served for twelve years as Director of Orchestral Studies and for twenty as Director of Choral Studies, conducting over one thousand concerts and a repertoire of over two thousand choral and/or orchestral works. His ensembles performed extensively within the Eastern United States and Canada, and in twenty foreign countries. In the community he served for 28 years as Music Director of the State College Choral Society and Madrigal Singers, and for ten years as Founder/Conductor of the professional Pennsylvania Chamber Chorale. He served as President of both the Pennsylvania and Eastern Division chapters of the American Choral Directors Association, and is author of an award-winning book on the works of the seventeenth-century German composer Heinrich Schutz. Originally from Iowa, Dr. Miller received bachelors and masters degrees from Drake University, and his doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University.

Dennis Shrock (Conducting Coach)

Dennis Shrock has combined the roles of conductor and scholar for the majority of his career, having held major conducting positions in the academic, professional, and community worlds as well as having authored notable texts and lectured at significant events. He is currently Visiting Professor of Music at Boston University and a member of the conducting staff at Yale University. Past positions include Head of Undergraduate Conducting at Westminster Choir College (1973-1978), Director of Choral Activities and Graduate Choral Studies at the University of Oklahoma (1978-2006), Artistic Director of Canterbury Choral Society (1981-1999), Assistant Conductor of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic (1990-1998), Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale (1999-2004), and Editor of the Choral Journal (1989-1992). In addition, he has conducted numerous festival choirs, including state conference and all-state ensembles in Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, Delaware, Virginia, and Arizona. He has also conducted in Carnegie Hall and been featured on National Public Radio.

Dr. Shrock received a bachelor's degree in music education from Westminster Choir College and both master's and doctoral degrees in choral conducting from Indiana University. While a student at Indiana, he founded the Bloomington Chamber Ensemble and was the first conductor of the university's newly formed Studio Opera Program. Both are still in existence today. While on the faculty of Westminster Choir College, he prepared choirs for the New Jersey Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

 

William Weinert (Conducting Coach)

Since 1994, William Weinert has served as Professor of Conducting and Director of Choral Activities at the Eastman School of Music, where he conducts the Eastman Chorale and the Eastman-Rochester Chorus and supervises the masters and doctoral programs in choral conducting. He has conducted throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in the Far East, and has served throughout the country as a clinician and an adjudicator, as well as giving conducting master classes in North America, Europe and Asia. Ensembles under Weinert's direction have performed at conferences of the American Choral Directors' Association and the Music Educators' National Conference.

 

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Last revised July 14, 2011

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