Meet the Faculty

Stephen Town

Dr. Stephen Town

Professor - Voice
E-mail: stown@nwmissouri.edu
Visit Dr. Town's Website

Dr. Stephen Town, Professor of Music at Northwest Missouri State University, was educated at the University of North Texas (BM, MM) and Indiana University (DM with distinction). In 1986, he joined the music faculty at Northwest, where his pedagogical responsibilities include the Tower Choir, applied voice, music theory, and aural skills training. Dr. Town has appeared in international, national, regional, and state conventions/symposia as a singer (e.g. 2003 International Symposium on the Composers and Compositions of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, Memphis, Tennessee; 1997 International Conference of The College Music Society, Vienna, Austria; 1990 National Convention of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Little Rock, Arkansas; 1985 National Convention of the Music Teachers National Association, Detroit, Michigan), as a musicologist (e.g. 2005 Fifth Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Nottingham, England; 2004 National Convention of The College Music Society, San Francisco, California; 2000 Ralph Vaughan Williams International Symposium, Godalming, England; 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Lawrence, Kansas; 1994 National Convention of The College Music Society, Savannah, Georgia; 1993 National Convention of The College Music Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota), and as a conductor (e.g. 2004 State Symposium of the Iowa Choral Directors Association, Des Moines, IA; 2004 Regional Meeting of The College Music Society Great Plains Chapter, Lincoln, NE; 2003 State Convention of the Missouri Music Educators Association).

Dr. Town is the recipient of many foreign, federal, and university fellowships and grants for his research work, which has been executed in the finest libraries of the United Kingdom and America (e.g. the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, Oxford, England; the British Library, London, England; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and the libraries of New York, Rutgers, Cornell, and Harvard Universities, where he has pursued advanced studies in the field of musicology). Dr. Town was selected as the eighth recipient of the prestigious Ralph Vaughan Williams Research Fellowship (1993), given by the Carthusian Trust of England, and his chapter/monograph on the great composer’s seminal choral work, A Sea Symphony, appeared in a Vaughan Williams Essays (Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2003). This contribution joins a long list of published research (articles and book reviews) that appears in the leading music journals of America encompassing eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century music. He is currently working on a book treating the autograph manuscripts and compositions of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the figures surrounding him (e.g. Parry, Stanford, Bliss, Finzi, Dyson, Rubbra), entitled Essays on British Choral Music, for Ashgate Publishing Ltd. (United Kingdom). Dr. Town continues his parallel interest in Austro-German music (e.g. specifically, the music of Brahms and Haydn).

His teaching experiences have been quite diverse, ranging from the music ministry in churches of various denominations to visiting professorships at institutions of higher education (e.g. in 1996, he taught at Imperial College, London, England). He appears frequently as a recitalist, soloist (e.g. his appearances as an occasional soloist are too numerous to cite; but in November 2003, he appeared with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in performances of the Magnificats by J. S. Bach and C. P. E. Bach; in December 2005, he performed the baritone role of “Simon” in Judas Maccabeus with the Rhodes College Singers, Rhodes Mastersingers Chorale, and the Rhodes Symphony Orchestra), adjudicator, conductor-clinician, and lecturer, and he is an active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (from 1994-2000, he served as an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Singing) and of the American Choral Directors Association (since 1991, he has been an Editorial Board Member and the Book Reviews Editor of The Choral Journal, and he has appeared on the panel sessions, “Performing on Paper: Writing for the Choral Journal,” at several National Conventions of the organization).

Finally, Dr. Town has been invited to guest conduct on the Spring 2007 concert season of MidAmerica Productions in Carnegie Hall (New York), where he will lead a large chorus of voices and the New England Symphonic Ensemble in a performance of Schicksalslied by Johannes Brahms and Te Deum by Joseph Haydn.

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