Gregory Gentry
Gregory Gentry (Director of Choral Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder) administers the doctoral, masters and undergraduate choral conducting programs at the College of Music, and is Artistic Director and conductor of CU’s annual Holiday Festival in historic Macky Auditorium.
Gentry’s collegiate choirs have performed for conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, National Collegiate Choral Organization, Music Educators National Conference, Society for American Music and College Music Society. At the University of Colorado Boulder, he recently conducted the combined choirs and CU symphony in a performance of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem. At Arizona State University—conducting works from Praetorius to Poulenc to Chen Yi—he presented combined symphonic and choral forces (350+ singers and instrumentalists) in William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, and Tito’s Say by Arizona composer James DeMars (a premiere that was honored by the Mexican Consulate) at Gammage Auditorium.
Gregory Gentry made his Phoenix Symphony conducting debut in 2009 to sold-out audiences with Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, while engagements in in New York and Rome have included Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Schubert’s Mass in G, and Schicksaslied by Johannes Brahms. As Phoenix Symphony Chorus Master, Dr. Gentry prepared many major choral/orchestral masterworks, including Puccini’s Messa di Gloria (2012), North American premiere of In Principio by Arvo Pärt (2011), On theTransmigration of Souls (2010) and Nixon in China (2009) by John Adams, world premiere of Mark Grey’s Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio (2008) with an English/Navajo libretto, and Arizona premiere of Golijov’s Ainadamar in collaboration with Dawn Upshaw and Kelley O’Connor (2008). Richard Nilsen wrote—in The Arizona Republic—that under Gentry’s leadership the Phoenix Symphony Chorus has become one of the gems of Phoenix’s cultural scene.
The new Gregory Gentry Choral Series with Fred Bock Publishers (2015) distributed by Hal Leonard Corporation, features reviving select choral octavi from the former Golden and National Music Publishers catalogues, including works by Cecil Effinger, George Lynn, Wray Lundquist and Roy Harris.
Gentry (DMA, MM, University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance; BME, University of Denver) is the former Director of Choral Performance at Arizona State University and the Director of Choral Activities at University of Alabama. His career has been influenced by studies with George Lynn, Eph Ehly, Vance George, Lynn Whitten, Dale Warland, Robert Shaw, and Aaron Copland. Gregory Gentry is past president of Arizona state chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA, 2010-2012), during which time he introduced the electronic format for the state newsletter and the use of QR codes for performance programs. He also takes professional delight in having founded Southwest Liederkranz in 2006, an intimate symposium for select choral professionals, where Kirke Mechem, Morten Lauridsen, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Vance George, Dale Warland, Dennis Keene, Maria Guinand, and Eph Ehly have, to date, been invited to share their knowledge, wisdom, humor, and varying inspirations.