Faculty & Staff

Paul Laprade is the President of Illinois ACDA (American Choral Directors Association), and is an active conductor, clinician, composer, and teacher. He has won several teaching awards, among these the Award for Teaching Excellence (Eastman School of Music) and the Faculty of the Year Award (Rock Valley College), and has taught choral music in the K-12 setting, and currently teaches choral literature at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in Illinois. He has lectured on the issues of musical appropriation in choral music in several venues, including the ATHIER Conference on Art and Humanities (Athens, Greece, 2022) and the International Conference on Music Aesthetics (Venice, 2020). His choral ensembles have performed at the White House for Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama. A former ACDA national chair for repertoire and editor for the Choral Literature in the Choral Journal, he is writing a textbook about choral literature/repertoire selection.