Gary Weidenaar is in the middle of his 36th year of teaching. Since 2006, he has served as Director of Choral Studies at Central Washington University, where over 200 singers make up the four choirs which comprise CWU’s traditional choral offerings. Weidenaar’s background is broad and varied. For the first fifteen years of his career he taught at public or private schools in Michigan, Germany, Norway, and California – with nine of those years overseas. His assignments included teaching everything from 3rd-13th grade students. He holds degrees from Western Michigan and Michigan State Universities and earned his doctorate at the University of Kansas in 2002. While studying at KU, Gary sang on this stage under his then-professor Simon Carrington (of King Singers fame) in a DCINY concert! Dr. Weidenaar spends a great deal of time with directors and/or choirs of all levels. He has presented workshops to music educators throughout the US; as well as in Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany. He has adjudicated, served as clinician, or conducted over 1,700 choirs since 2002. His Chamber Choir has collaborated with Ola Gjeilo on four separate recording sessions, which have yielded 11 multi-camera YouTube videos of the composer’s music.

R. DeAndre Johnson is the pastor of music and worship life at Christ Church Sugar Land in Sugar Land, TX. He received a B.M. in Sacred Music at Centenary College of Louisiana where he was a student conductor for the Centenary College Choir and Centenary College Camerata, directed by Dr. Will K. Andress and Dr. Julia B. Thorn, respectively. He earned a Master of Sacred Music from Southern Methodist University where he studied with Dr. Alfred Calabrese, Dr. Pamela Elrod-Huffman and Dr. C. Michael Hawn. DeAndre has been the chorus master and a frequent guest conductor of the Houston Ebony Opera Guild, a community chorus committed to the preservation and performance of classical music of the African diaspora.

The Festival Choir of Christ Church is a non-auditioned adult chorus that sings a wide variety of choral music, from late-Baroque and classical to contemporary gospel, as it leads in worship at the 10:55am Festival Service. The choir also performs major concerts at least twice a year and tours nationally and internationally every two years.