Aug. 24 – The Northwestern College Department of Music is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Mary Kay Geston, associate professor of music, to two new conducting positions in the Twin Cities and St. Cloud areas.

VOICES OF EXPERIENCE

A Minnesota Chorale-MacPhail Center for Music steering committee has chosen Dr. Geston as conductor of Voices of Experience, a new and artistically ambitious chorus for Twin Cities’ seniors, ages 55 and older. Voices of Experience will make its debut at MacPhail’s Antonello Hall on November 19 at noon. The group will also perform with the Minnesota Chorale and the Minneapolis Youth Chorus—four generations singing side-by-side—as the centerpiece of the Chorale’s 2010 Bridges community-engagement project, Sing On! on November 21 at 3 p.m., at Westwood Lutheran Church, 9001 Cedar Lake Road, St. Louis Park.

GREAT RIVER CHORALE

Great River Chorale is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Kay Geston as its new artistic director. Based in St. Cloud, Minn., Great River Chorale is a fifty-voice chamber choir composed of skilled amateur singers that seeks to provide superb performances of compelling music from all times and places. It is an integral part of the thriving central Minnesota arts community and is dedicated to imaginative collaborations with other area arts organizations. Great River Chorale celebrates its tenth anniversary season in 2010-11 with Christmas concerts on December 11 and 12 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in St. Cloud and a festive anniversary concert on April 30, 2011, also at Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

Dr. Geston is an associate professor of music at Northwestern College, has directed the Manitou Singers at St. Olaf College, previously taught at universities in South Dakota and Colorado, and has served as an artistic advisor to the Minnesota Chorale. Geston has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting and literature and is a sought-after guest conductor of honor and festival choirs regionally and nationally.

In January 2010 she was a choral clinician for the Korea International Choral Association in Daegu, South Korea. Choirs under her direction have performed at state and division professional conferences and with the Minnesota Orchestra. Geston is president-elect of the North Central Division of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), serves on ACDA of Minnesota’s F. Melius Christiansen Endowment Fund committee, and previously was president of ACDA of Minnesota.