Judith Willoughby is the Wanda L. Bass Professor of Conducting and Choral Music Education at Oklahoma City University and Artistic Director of the Youth Choral Program of the Canterbury Choral Society. As a guest conductor, clinician and conference headliner, Willoughby has lead choruses and orchestras in the world's major concert halls in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Australia and Asia. During the 2007-2008 season, she conducted her 44th all state chorus in the United States.
During the 2008-2009 season, Professor Willoughby makes her debut at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, conducting Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem. She also headlines the Charleston International Choral Festival in South Carolina, returns to New York to conduct a choral festival at Riverside Church and visits Yale University to conduct a choral festival. Willoughby has been an active honor choir conductor for the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), conducting honor choruses for one national, five divisional and numerous state conventions. Willoughby served on the board of Chorus America for nine years, including two terms as secretary, and has been active on that organization's conducting taskforce, co-developing two choral/orchestral conducting master classes (Northwestern University 2004 and San Francisco 2007) and serving as faculty for conducting master classes in Cincinnati, Ohio and Kansas City, Missouri.
Professor Willoughby, a committed choral music educator, founded the Temple University Children's Choir in 1991, leading that ensemble to international prominence. Highlights of that ensemble's work, during her tenure, included many appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, international performances, appearances at national and regional meetings of the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educators National Conference, recordings for the 2000 edition of the Silver Burdett Music Series, and in 2000, appearances at the Oregon Bach Festival with Helmut Rilling and in their own concert at the University of Oregon's Hult Center. While in Pennsylvania, and employed as a college professor, Willoughby developed a highly regarded, multidisciplinary performing arts series, serving terms as president of Pennsylvania Presenters, Pennsylvania's ACDA and president of the Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Association. She helped roster the first two artist panels for Pennsylvania Artists on Tour (PENNPAT), a collaborative touring initiative funded by the Pew and Heinz Foundations as well as the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She also served on numerous music panels in Pennsylvania and other states. During her years in Chicago, as a tenured member of the conducting and music education faculty at Northwestern University's School of Music, she was choral director for Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art during its recreation of Dutch choreographer Beppie Blankert's dance, Odyssey, to the music of Louis Andriessen. She was also the first (and only) female invited to conduct the William Ferris Chorale on a regular subscription concert.
A graduate of Temple and Northwestern Universities and a student of Natalie Hinderas (piano), Elaine Brown (choral conducting) and William Smith and Max Rudolph (instrumental conducting), Willoughby taught in the Summer Institute program of Eastman’s School of Music, as well as Westminster Choir College and Central Connecticut State University. Her interest in public policy's intersection with arts education and performance has resulted in her continuing service on national arts panels in the public sector, national foundations in the private sector and regional and state arts agencies. Judith Willoughby was inducted, as a National Arts Associate, into the Alpha Zeta chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota, at Oklahoma City University in April 2008. She edits a choral series published by Alliance Music and she has authored a chapter in Way Over in Beulah Lan': Understanding and Performing the Negro Spiritual, by Dr. Andre Thomas, which was published in 2007 by Heritage Music Press.
Judith A. Willoughby
Wanda L. Bass School of Music
Oklahoma City University
2501 North Blackwelder
Oklahoma City, OK 73106-1493
Office: 405.208.5514; Fax: 405.208.5971
Email: jwiloughby@okcu.edu
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