JEFF WHITMILL
Director
Composition, Music Theory, Sightsinging, Arranging/Orchestration

Composer, conductor, arranger, teacher, hornist, singer - Jeff Whitmill has been involved in music all his life. His mother, a gifted pianist, and his father, a creative mind of the first order, raised him in a home full of music. Some of his earliest memories are of playing in the back yard while listening to his mother play Chopin, Bach and Mozart.

Currently the Director of the St. Barnabas Center for the Arts (and the church's Choir Director), Jeff taught music for 15 years across a wide spectrum - from beginning 5th-graders to college students. He has taught bands, orchestras, choirs, music theory classes, private horn lessons, theatrical voice - and even did a stint one summer teaching the History of Rock 'n' Roll. His school performing ensembles accumulated an impressive array of awards at contests and festivals, and on more than one occasion he used his compositional skills to push the envelope for not only his students, but for judges and audiences as well. A particularly memorable incident involved a Texas UIL orchestra contest, a junior high orchestra and a 35-minute performance piece complete with staging, lighting, surround-sound electronic effects and nine projectors. The piece concluded with almost all of the students putting aside their instruments and singing. It was only performed once, but it was unforgettable for all who were there.

Multimedia works were a big part of Jeff's output for about a decade, but the far larger proportion of his work has been centered around traditional ensembles. Two symphonies, five masses, three ballets, five tone poems and two cantatas comprise the larger works of his career. In addition, he's written a host of smaller works for band and for chorus. He very much enjoys writing works for chorus and instruments; his MASS FOR JOB was premiered in February, 2006 at St. Barnabas.

Jeff has conducted - and written for - school music groups, community, church and corporate choirs and professional and community musical theatres. He is also the founder/composer for The Music of Your Name, a musical gift service highlighted on NPR's Performance Today in 2002. In that appearance, he was asked at the beginning of the show to write a 4-part piece based on the name of the show and have it ready for performance by the Shanghai Quartet before the end of the hour. Thanks to e-mail attachments and PDFs (the quartet was in Washington, D.C.; Jeff was in Minnesota), everything was completed and in the players' hands on time.