About
Stephen Barr is a conductor, composer, and orchestrator working in the greater Pittsburgh, PA area. Currently in his sixth year as Assistant Professor and Director of Choirs at Slippery Rock University, he teaches music theory, music technology, and orchestration, and conducts the University Concert Choir, Women’s Choir, and Chamber Singers ensembles. He is an active composer and arranger working in a variety of mediums, from modern art music for choirs, bands, orchestras, and chamber groups, to contemporary film score and music for mediain orchestral and orchestral-electronic hybrid styles.
Stephen’s conducting experience includes a variety of choral and instrumental ensembles including large and small mixed choirs, chamber and full symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, and more. Among the choral masterworks he has prepared and conducted are Fauré’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Rutter’s Gloria, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Duruflé’s Requiem. He has also served as an adjudicator, clinician, and guest conductor throughout Pennsylvania. This spring, under his direction the SRU Concert Choir will participate in the premiere of composer James Eakin’s Flowers Over the Grave of War at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and will perform Mozart’s Requiem in Pittsburgh, PA.
As a composer, Stephen’s concert music has been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Florida Orchestra (Tampa, FL), American Academy of Conducting Orchestra and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble (Aspen Music Festival, CO), the Three Rivers Choral Society and the Slippery Rock Piano Trio (Pittsburgh, PA), as well as numerous college/university choral and instrumental ensembles. He has also arranged and orchestrated works for the Sarasota Ballet and Sarasota Symphony as well as other organizations.
He holds music degrees from Westminster College (BM), the University of South Florida (MM), and West Virginia University (DMA), where he was awarded a prestigious Swiger Doctoral Fellowship. His teachers in composition were John Beall, David Taddie, James Lewis, and Douglas Starr, and his principal conducting teachers have included Kathleen Shannon, Don Wilcox, and William Wiedrich. He has been a resident at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Susan and Ford Schumann Film Scoring Program at the Aspen Music School and Festival in Aspen, CO, where he studied composition and film scoring with John Corigliano, Jack Smalley, and Jeff Rona. He has also studied conducting with eminent American choral conductor Robert Page.
