NC ACDA
Fall Conference
September 17-18, 2010
UNC Greensboro School of Music

Clinician - Dr. Jerry Blackstone

Grammy Award winning conductor Jerry Blackstone is Director of Choirs and Chair of the Conducting Department at the University of
Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he conducts the Chamber Choir, teaches conducting at the graduate level, and administers a choral program of eleven choirs. In February 2006, he received two Grammy Awards (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best
Classical Album”) as chorusmaster for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and
of Experience. In addition to Professor Blackstone’s choral conducting work at the University, he has led operatic productions with the University of Michigan Opera Theatre, including productions of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.

Professor Blackstone is considered one of the country’s leading conducting teachers, and his students have received first place awards and been finalists in both the graduate and undergraduate divisions of the American Choral Directors Association biennial National Choral Conducting Awards competition.

In 2004, Dr. Blackstone was named Conductor and Music Director of the University Musical Society Choral Union, a large community/university chorus that frequently appears with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Choirs prepared by Dr. Blackstone have appeared under the batons of Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, John Adams, Helmuth Rilling, James Conlon, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Peter Oundjian, and Yitzak Perlman.

As conductor of the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club from 1988-2002, Professor Blackstone led the ensemble in performances at ACDA national and division conventions and on extensive concert tours throughout Australia, Eastern and Central Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. The recently released UM Men’s Glee Club CD, I have had singing, is a retrospective of his tenure as conductor of the ensemble.

Santa Barbara Music Publishing distributes Dr. Blackstone’s acclaimed educational video, Working with Male Voices and publishes the Jerry Blackstone Choral Series, a set of choral publications that presents works by several composers in a variety of musical styles.

Prior to coming to the University of Michigan in 1988, Professor Blackstone served on the music faculties of Phillips University in Oklahoma, Westmont College in California, and Huntington College in Indiana.