Clayton Parr
Choir Master
Clayton Parr is is Director of Choral Activities at Albion College, Albion, Michigan, where he conducts two choirs and teaches courses in music education, conducting, music fundamentals, music history, and liberal arts electives. A native of Detroit, Dr. Parr graduated from Albion with degrees in music and physics. He taught music and mathematics in the public schools in Michigan and New York and received his Master's and DMA from Michigan State University. Before coming to Albion, he taught and conducted choral ensembles at DePaul University in Chicago and Miami University in Ohio.
His choirs have performed at conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, Illinois Music Education Association, Ohio Music Educators Association, Intercollegiate Men's Choruses and College Music Society. His choirs have completed several international tours and have won prizes at the International Musical Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales on two occasions. He led the Blue Lake International Choir on European tours in 2018 and 2019.
His activity as guest conductor, lecturer, adjudicator and performer has taken him to 24 states and 18 foreign countries, including the Republic of Georgia, where he was a Fulbright scholar and guest lecturer at the Sarajishvili State Conservatoire. His guest conducting appearances include state honor choirs in Ohio and Michigan. He is music director of MEME (Michigan Educators Male Ensemble), a men's singing group made up of teachers from around the state.
As a performer, Parr has sung with the Cincinnati Opera, Music of the Baroque, the Grant Park Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Battle Creek Symphony and the Billings Symphony. He has had articles published in the Choral Journal, Music Educators Journal, and International Choral Bulletin, and he is editor for the series "Music of the Republic of Georgia" for earthsongs publishing. He is music director of the Battle Creek Master Singers. and serves as Executive Secretary of IMC: The Tenor-Bass Choral Consortium. He is co-author of Supra! A Feast of Georgian Song, a collection of 18 3-part Georgian folk songs, published by Hal Leonard.