Maurice Boyer is professor of music at Concordia University Chicago, where he conducts the chamber orchestra, the chapel choir (Schola Cantorum) and women’s choir (Laudate), and teaches aural skills. He is artistic director of Aestas Consort and associate conductor of the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest (IL). Recently, he served as assistant chorus master and subsequently guest chorus master with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Although born in the United States, he began his musical training (piano, voice, and solfège) in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he lived until the age of eighteen. Boyer holds a doctor of musical arts degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a dissertation on the Seventh Symphony of Jean Sibelius. His master of music is in choral conducting and his bachelor of music in sacred music (with piano as his principal instrument). Both were earned at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. His principal conducting teachers have been Joseph Flummerfelt, Kenneth Kiesler, and James Ross. He also studied theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Among his areas of sustained interest and research are the sacred choral works of J. S. Bach—historical performance practice and theology—and the symphonic music of Mozart, Mahler and Sibelius.
Degrees
DMA, Orchestral Conducting – University of Maryland; College Park, MD
MM, Choral Conducting – Westminster Choir College of Rider University; Princeton, NJ
BMus, Sacred Music – Westminster Choir College of Rider University; Princeton, NJ