Church Music Institute 2020

MARILYN SHENENBERGER, conductor, collaborative accompanist and arranger, holds a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Westminster Choir College, Dalcroze teaching certificate from the Dalcroze School of Music in Manhattan under Robert Abramson, and a Bachelor of Music from Lebanon Valley College in music education.

Shenenberger is no stranger to the handbell community. She has been a frequent presenter at Handbell Musicians of America’s Area II Festival Conferences and workshops, both as a clinician and as a director. She has composed and arranged several handbell pieces.

Additional clinician experience includes Dalcroze movement, ear training, harmonic immersion solfege and accompanying. Shenenberger has written and recorded the accompaniments for Sabine Horstmann’s Choral Vocal Technique, James Jordan’s Choral Warm-up Core Vocal Exercises (children’s choir edition), is the author of Learn to Listen, a harmonic introduction to solfege, and is co-author with Dr. Jordan of Ear Training: Aural Immersion Exercises for Choirs, a book which provides intonation exercises and choral warm-ups in eight modes, published by GIA.

Shenenberger has taught on the faculty at Westminster Choir College and West Chester University. She is the principal accompanist for the Westminster Conducting Institute, working closely with James Jordan, Charles Bruffy, Simon Carrington, Bruce Chamberlain, Sabine Horstmann and Weston Noble. She is retired from a 30-year rewarding career as director of music and organist at churches in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania where she directed a variety of choral, handbell and instrumental ensembles. In Virginia, she is an accompanist for dance classes at Shenandoah University, founder and director of a small women’s vocal ensemble at Lake Holiday and keyboardist in a local jazz quartet.

Hailed by the Washington Post for his “dazzling expertise” on the podium, DONALD McCULLOUGH is considered one of America’s pre-eminent choral conductors. After leading the Master Chorale of Washington in the John F. Kennedy Center Concert Hall for more than a decade, he developed a reputation for creating choruses that sang “with an innate sense of lyricism and musical poise” and “sensitive, scrupulous and heartfelt” (Washington Post).

During his tenure with the Master Chorale, the 120-member symphonic chorus performed 16 world premieres, produced three nationally distributed CDs, and toured twice throughout central Europe. The chorale earned The Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence in North America, performed in renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, and became the chorus of choice for the National Symphony Orchestra, performing with such renowned conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Kurt Masur and Ivan Fischer.

McCullough is also a composer whose works have been critically acclaimed throughout North America and Europe. Routinely sought after for commissions, his works have been described as “powerful and heart-wrenching,” “mystically beautiful” and “remarkably inspirational.”

In response to an invitation from German and Polish consulates, McCullough led the Master Chorale in the European premiere of one of his most moving compositions, Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps. The work was performed in Krakow, Dresden, Berlin and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial during the European commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. In November 2014, 70 singers from the Jacksonville Symphony Chorus traveled to New York to form the core of a 120-member chorus under McCullough’s direction in the Lincoln Center premiere of his Holocaust Cantata, presented by Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY).

Previously, McCullough was the founder and music director of two Norfolk-based choruses: the Virginia Chorale and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus. He holds bachelor’s degrees in organ and vocal performance from Stetson University and master’s degrees in sacred music and vocal performance from Southern Methodist University. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, he recently moved to Atlantic Beach, Florida, to focus on his expanding composing career and in 2012 became the director of the Jacksonville Symphony Chorus.

Visit donaldmccullough.com to explore his music and learn more.

Enthusiastic reviews applaud the “virtuoso performance by organist J. THOMAS MITTS — a “sensitive soloist who precisely spelled out the virtuoso passages” in his “spell-binding” appearances in festivals and concert series in the United States, Europe and Russia. He is known for his insightful approach to early music as well as his interpretive skills and declamatory deliverance of the major Romantic repertoire.

Dr. Mitts is associate professor of organ and director of church music at Shenandoah Conservatory. In addition to teaching organ performance and related keyboard skills, he oversees the undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs in church music. Each summer he plans and leads the Church Music Institute, a two-week intensive study of the skills and knowledge required of a musician working in the church.

As the artistic director of Shenandoah’s Bach-Handel Festival of Baroque Music, Dr. Mitts works with students from across Shenandaoh Conservatory in the preparation and performance of early music. He also serves as organist for the annual Festival of Lessons & Carols, a highly anticipated event that he designs and coordinates. Dr. Mitts also leads graduate seminars in music history and music theory, and oversees document preparation for doctoral lecture recitals.

Since 1993 Dr. Mitts has also served as organist and choirmaster at Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C., a church whose worship life is propelled by dynamic music and liturgy. In this capacity he has composed Mass settings, graduals, psalms and other liturgical elements as well as anthems and festival settings for voices and instrumental ensembles. He has also prepared scholarly performing editions of early music for use in liturgical celebrations and concerts.

Prior to joining the faculty at Shenandoah, Dr. Mitts was associated with Adas Israel Congregation, also in Washington, D.C., as organist, pianist and choral conductor. There he created arrangements of music from the Holocaust and a performing edition of music for the Sabbath by Salamone Rossi, which he later conducted for the Jewish Service of the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in 2010. He has held academic appointments at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, the University of New Orleans, and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.