Christopher Kiver is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Pennsylvania State University where he directs the Concert Choir and Glee Club, oversees the graduate choral conducting program and teaches classes in choral conducting and choral literature. He is Director of Music at the University Baptist and Brethren Church in State College and has served as founder and director of The Orpheus Singers and guest conductor of the Pennsylvania Center Orchestra. Kiver is a graduate of the University of London, Florida State University and the University of Michigan where he received the D.M.A. in choral conducting.
Choirs under Kiver’s direction have performed at numerous state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and National Association for Music Education. In March 2017, Kiver led a performance of Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields with the Penn State University Concert Choir and Bang on a Can All-Stars. He has taught at the Westminster Choir College Summer and Saturday Seminar programs, and appeared as guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator in the United States, Australia, China and New Zealand.
Kiver is a former national Repertoire and Standards chair for Men’s/TTBB Choirs for the American Choral Directors Association, and a past-president of the Pennsylvania chapter of ACDA.
A native of England, he has received numerous prizes and scholarships including a Fulbright Award, and the 2002 Sydney World Choral Symposium Foundation Scholarship. In February 2006, he was a double Grammy Award winner (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as a chorus master for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Kiver was the recipient of Penn State University’s President’s Award for Engagement with Students in 2017.
Previous Directors of the Glee Club:
F. P. Atherton
E. F. Davis
Charles M. H. Atherton
Clarence C. Robinson
Richard W. Grant
Frank Gullo
Lewis Spratlan
Douglas Miller
Bruce Trinkley
1888
1889
1890-1893
1893-1912
1912-1922
1922-1940
1940-1967
1967-1969
1969-1970
1970-2005