Jerry Blackstone

Visiting Professor, Conducting

Disciplines: Conducting

Education

Professor Blackstone holds degrees from the University of Southern California, Indiana University, and Wheaton College.

Professional Biography

Grammy® Award winner Jerry Blackstone is a leading conductor and highly respected conducting pedagogue. As Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, he heads the graduate choral conducting studio in the Sacred Music at Notre Dame Program. He is also Professor Emeritus of Conducting at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he served as Director of Choirs and led the graduate program in choral conducting. In February 2006, he received two Grammy® Awards (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as chorusmaster for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Choirs prepared by Blackstone have appeared under the batons of Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, Hans Graf, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, Helmuth Rilling, James Conlon, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Peter Oundjian, and Yitzak Perlman.

With a heart for church music ministry, Blackstone served for seventeen years as music director at churches in California, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Michigan. He is also an active guest conductor and workshop presenter and has appeared in forty-two states as well as New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Sicily. From 2012-2024 he led the Adult Choir Camp and Choral Conducting Institute at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Recent appearances include Handel’s Messiah (with choir and orchestra) in Shanghai, a concert in Virginia with the US Army Chorus, headlining the 2022 Illinois American Choral Directors Association’s summer conference, conducting the Duruflé Requiem in Carnegie Hall in 2024, and serving as a guest faculty member in April-May 2024 at the Eastman School of Music.