Dr. Earl Rivers
Director of Music
Earl Rivers, Knox Director of Music since 1974, is Professor Emeritus of Conducting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Over a 47-year career at CCM, he conducted staged productions of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, and acclaimed regional premieres of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls and El Niño, Tan Dun’s Water Passion after St. Matthew, Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 5 -Requiem, Bardo and Nirmanakaya, and Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo. For 20 seasons (1998-2008),
Rivers was music director and conductor of Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble. He leads the 50-voice Knox Choir that has premiered 15 newly commissioned works and offered Cincinnati premieres on the Knox Music Series of J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ, and Vaughan Williams’ Hodie. International guest conducting this season includes J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor with South Korea’s National Chorus and Orchestra. Rivers has received Choral America’s Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Choral Art, honoring a lifetime of significant contributions to the professional choral art.
