Dr. Ohrt Biography
Joseph Ohrt, conductor, serves as Director of Choral Activities and Chairman of the Music Department at Central Bucks High School-West. His unique teaching style has not only challenged thousands of students over the years but has also inspired an unprecedented number of collaborations with composers around the globe. His passionate vocation is being advanced throughout the world with the Joseph Ohrt Choral Series, published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing in California. Dr. Ohrt is a contributing author to a new seminal text on secondary choral music education that will be released by GIA Publications in the spring of 2008. He is the choral arranger for the new musical by Christopher Smith, Amazing Grace: The True Story. His adventuresome programming, involving new compositions and movement, is serving to create a new paradigm in standards for high school choral performance.
Dr. Ohrt holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of South Carolina. He has also earned a teaching certificate from the Kodàly Musical Training Institute at the University of Hartford and an Artist/Teacher Diploma from the Choral Music Experience Institute at Northern Illinois University. He has studied under master teachers: Joseph Flummerfelt, Frauke Haasemann, Margaret Hillis, Dennis Keene, Doreen Rao, and Gregg Smith. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at University of South Carolina and Westminster Choir College. Ohrt has served as choral conductor at the Westminster Vocal Institute and at Csehy Summer School of Music.
Dr. Ohrt has prepared children’s choruses for performances at the American Guild of Organists National Convention and with the Curtis Institute Opera, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and an internationally released recording with the Voices of Ascension and Dennis Keene.
Dr. Ohrt serves as a mentor to many young composers and contemporary artists. He appeared on MTV shows School Days and Who Knows the Band, the VH1 show Driven, and sung backup in the choir for Barbra Streisand’s concerts held at Madison Square Garden. As a member of the Westminster Choir, he has sung opera professionally in the United States and Italy, and has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras. Ohrt is a member of Pi Kappa Lamda National Music Honor Society and is listed in Cambridge Who’s Who, Who’s Who in America and multiple consecutive editions of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He served on the American Choral Directors Association of Pennsylvania Board of Directors for several years as the Repertoire and Standards Chairperson for High School Choirs and Male Choirs and currently serves the board in the position of Historian. Dr. Ohrt was nominated for the prestigious 2006 Disney Teacher Awards and was selected in the top one hundred applicants out of ten thousand.
