The University of North Texas has a distinguished seventy-five year history of preparing choral conductors and singers for the challenges of the professional singer/conductor/teacher. Members of the UNT Choral and Voice Studies Programs regularly perform with area opera companies and choruses such as the Dallas Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Dallas Symphony Chorus, Dallas Bach Society, Denton Bach Society, the Orchestra of New Spain, Orpheus Chamber Singers, and Schola Cantorum of Texas.
Our alumni hold prestigious singing or conducting positions with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, numerous regional opera companies, nationally prominent professional choirs (including Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Seraphic Fire, A Room full of Teeth, the Singing Sergeants, the President’s Own Marine Band, the Navy Sea Chanters, the U.S. Army Chorus), and university faculties across the nation.
Many of our students have gone on to teach in prestigious university choral programs (including Westminster Choir College, Abilene Christian University, the Crane School of Music, East Texas Baptist University, the Hartt School of Music, Kansas State University, Louisiana State University, San Jose State University, the University of Kansas, the University of Mississippi, the University of South Carolina), a number of very successful professional and civic choirs (including the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the Young Singers of New York, and the Turtle Creek Chorale) and perhaps most importantly, outstanding public school programs across Texas and the nation. Just since 2000, our graduates have founded noted professional choirs including: the Helios Chamber Choir, Fort Worth Voices, Kinnara, Project Eve, Paradigm, the South Dakota Chorale, and The Tennessee Chamber Chorus. (For an up to date list of graduate conducting placements since 2001, please visit our choral website.)
Performance Literature
The UNT choral program affords our singers opportunities to study and learn not only the major historical choral works but also to participate in performances of music on the cutting edge of twenty-first century music. Our singers were thrilled in April 2013 to give the premier performance of Jake Heggie’s Ahab Symphony, a new choral/orchestral work commissioned by the UNT College of Music. For more than forty years the UNT A Cappella Choir has maintained an international reputation for its performances of new choral music from across the globe.
Guest Clinicians and Lecturers
Our students are regularly exposed to some of the most important conductors and pedagogues in the choral arts of America and the world. In recent years our students have had the opportunity to learn from Ann Howard Jones, Anton Armstrong, Bruce Browne, Joshua Habermann, Craig Hella Johnson, James Jordan, Simon Carrington, Rodney Eichenberger, Patrick Gardner, Maria Guinand, Graeme Jenkins, Jaako Mäntyjärvi, and Robert Sund.
National Recording Projects
Under the banner of the North Texas Chamber Choir, members of the A Cappella Choir have recorded three companion discs for GIA’s educational series Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir. In December 2007, GIA released a new compact disc titled Musicks Empire, featuring performances by the UNT A Cappella Choir and the North Texas Chamber Choir. In 2003, the UNT Grand Chorus and Wind Symphony were featured on a new DVD recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The disc, released by Klavier Records, was placed on the 2004 Grammy Nominations Ballot.
Come Audition for a place in one of America’s most renowned schools of music.
Faculty
- Richard Sparks, A Cappella Choir, Collegium Singers, Grand Chorus, Graduate Conducting, Advanced Choral Techniques
- Gregg Hobbs, University Singers and Advanced Conducting
- Joshua Habermann, Choral Literature
Area Website
Contact Information
Dr. Richard Sparks, Interim Director of Choral Studies
richard.sparks@unt.edu