The University of North Carolina at Pembroke is pleased to announce the sixteenth annual Honor Choir, to be held on Saturday, March 23, 2024.
The clinic will be held in person on the UNCP campus, with clinician Dr. Britt Cooper, coordinator of visual and performing arts and professor of choral music at Walsh University in Ohio.
Information for nominating students will be sent out in January 2024. Directors can send a message to Meggan Hollis at meggan.hollis@uncp.edu to confirm that they are on the list to receive that email.
For more information please contact Dr. Jaeyoon Kim at jaeyoon.kim@uncp.edu.
Dr. Cooper is Professor of Choral Music and Coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts at Walsh University. He directs two university choral ensembles: the Walsh University Chorale and the Walsh Chamber Singers, an auditioned touring ensemble. The Chorale annually presents a Festival of Lessons and Carols, one of the most enduring Christmas traditions at Walsh, now in its 12th year. Under Dr. Cooper’s direction, the Chamber Singers have toured extensively throughout Ohio and have traveled to Washington D.C., New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago. The ensemble has also toured Italy on three separate occasions. Performance highlights under Dr. Cooper’s direction have included St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, and St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Dr. Cooper served for ten years as the Director of Choruses for the Canton Symphony Orchestra, stepping down in 2022. Highlights of his tenure included performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Verdi’s Requiem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Dr. Cooper conducted the orchestra on multiple Masterworks concerts and collaborated in this role with choruses from other local private universities, including Mount Union, Malone, and the College of Wooster.
Dr. Cooper currently serves as Director of the Chancel Choir at Christ Presbyterian Church in Canton and, since 2018, has been engaged as the Featured Conductor of the Summit Choral Society’s annual Christmas Candlelight Concerts. In June of 2019, Dr. Cooper was invited by MidAmerica Productions to conduct a concert featuring a mass chorus of 150 voices and orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York.
A product of Lake High School in Uniontown, Dr. Cooper regularly travels to local high schools throughout northeast Ohio as a clinician working with their choirs. He is regularly in demand as a director of regional honor choirs and festival choirs.
Dr. Cooper lives in Uniontown with his wife, Heather, who serves as Director of Music and Organist at Christ Presbyterian Church in Canton, directs the Performance Choir of the Summit Choral Society, and will be featured in a 2023 Masterworks concert of the Canton Symphony Orchestra at the organ. The couple is blessed every day by their two children, Megan and Mark.