Christopher Kiver

  • Director, Choral Activities
  • Choirs, Conducting

106 Music Building I

Christopher Kiver

Biography

Christopher Kiver conducts 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 state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and National Association for Music Education. 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 President-Elect Designate for the Eastern Region of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), former national chair for the Repertoire and Standards Committee on Men's/TTBB Choirs for ACDA, 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 Symposium Foundation Conducting Scholarship. In 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's "President’s Award for Engagement with Students" in 2017.