Honor Choir 2014
Approximately 200-225 high school students, representing 21 schools from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky, will visit Lee University’s campus Friday and Saturday to participate in the annual Honor Choir. The two-day event will culminate in a performance on Saturday at 2 p.m. in Lee’s Conn Center.
Choir members, recommended by their high school choral directors to represent their school at the event, will rehearse choral music under the direction of Lynnel Joy Jenkins, a guest director for the event, and Dr. Jonathan Rodgers, assistant professor of music at Lee.
Students will be grouped into a men’s choir and a women’s choir to rehearse and perform several selections, with the entire group coming together to form a mixed choir which will perform three pieces. In addition to the Honor Choir, Lee’s Choral Union, conducted by Dr. Jonathan Rogers, will perform at Saturday’s performance.
Ms. Jenkins serves as artistic director of the Princeton Girlchoir and as the choral teacher at Timberlake Middle School in Pennington, N.J. She also serves on the conducting faculty for the Vocal Arts Camp of the James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. She has been a lecturer and conductor in China, Hong Kong, Iceland, and South Africa and has served as a guest conductor for numerous Honor Choirs, All-States, and Choral Festivals across the United States. Jenkins was recently inducted into the Westminster Music Education Hall of Fame and received the Westminster Alumni Merit Award.
She holds degrees from Temple University and Westminster Choir College of Rider University, where she received the Elaine Brown Conducting Award at each institution.
Dr. Rodgers is an active choral director, pianist, church musician, and musical arranger. His arrangements have been published with Walton Music and Colla Voce and have been performed by Mountain Brook and Hoover High Schools in Birmingham, Alabama, the University of Southern Mississippi Southern Chorale, and the Brigham Young University Women’s Chorus. He is a member of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and he has been a guest speaker and presenter at the Chicago National ACDA and Mississippi MENC/ACDA conferences. He has been a guest conductor for the YouthCue Choirs summer festival choir in Washington, D.C. and a clinician for Louisiana’s District II Women’s Honor Choir.
Dr. Rodgers joined the faculty at Lee in 2013 and holds a doctorate in Choral Conducting from the University of Southern Mississippi, as well as a master’s in Church Music and bachelor’s in Music Education from Samford University.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact LuAnn Holden, associate professor of music at Lee, at lholden@leeuniversity.edu or 614-8259.