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Choral Faculty

Dr. David Howard - Interim Director of Choral Activites, Associate Professor of Music (Choral)
Dr. Steven Curtis - Interim Professor of Music (Choral)
Dr. Nathan Dougherty - Collegium Musicum
Siwon Kim - Graduate Assistant
Kaycee Logsdon - Graduate Assistant
Esther Park - Graduate Assistant

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David Howard

Dr. David Howard

Interim Director of Choral Activites
Associate Professor of Music (Choral)

Office: Catlett Music Center 127H
Email: dhoward@ou.edu
Website: thedavidhoward.com

David Howard is Interim Director of Choral Activities at the University of Oklahoma where he conducts the OU Men’s Glee Club and the OU Women’s Chorus. He also teaches graduate and undergraduate choral literature and choral conducting in addition to coordinating the annual Young Men’s Vocal Workshop and the Women’s Choral Leadership Workshop. His collegiate choirs, civic choruses, opera choruses, church choirs, secondary school choirs and festival choirs in the United States and Europe have been hailed for their artistry. The OU Women’s Chorus performed by invitation at the Oklahoma Music Educators Association annual conference in 2018 and 2024. Their album Voces in Concordia is available on all streaming services. The OU Men’s Glee Club’s album of OU spirit songs, Fight for OKU: The Legendary OU Men’s Glee Club is also available on all streaming services. Both choirs recently released a second album Septemundos.

Dr. Howard is the founder and artistic director Schola Cantorum Oklahoma, a professional choral ensemble dedicated to the performance of early music. Schola Cantorum Oklahoma has performed the complete Triumphs of Oriana (1601), Charpentier’s Messe de minuit pour Noël, H.9 (1694), a program of the music of Hapsburg Spain, and two concerts with the Oklahoma Baroque Orchestra: “Venetian Holiday: Music of Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Legrenzi, and Schütz,” and “A Concert Spirituel: Music of Rameau, Delalande, and Lully.” Upcoming concerts will feature early Baroque music from the French court and Roland de Lassus’s Psalmi Davidis Poentitentiales (1584).

Equally at home as a baritone soloist, Dr. Howard has performed nationally and internationally in oratorio and cantata presentations, and as a recitalist. Recent performances include Schubert’s Winterreise, D. 911 with pianist Igor Lipinski, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 with the Tulsa Chorale and Orchestra, and Handel’s Messiah with the Bartlesville Chorale and Orchestra. His commercial album of sacred music for voice, piano, and harp, entitled Consecration, on the Blue Griffin Records label, is available through streaming services.

Dr. Howard’s scholarly articles have appeared in the British academic music journal, Musical Times, and in The Choral Journal and ChorTeach. Moreover, his performing editions and choral arrangements are published by Alliance Music Publications. He has presented on a range of topics at national conferences including the American Choral Directors Association, the Texas Music Educators Association, and the Kansas Music Educators Association.

He holds the Bachelor of Music Education degree and Master of Music degree in vocal performance from the University of Central Oklahoma and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting from Michigan State University.

Dr. Howard and his wife, Andrea, have been married for twenty-seven years and have four children. Their eldest son, who met his wife singing in his father’s choir, is a full-time Oklahoma National Guardsman. Their daughter and son-in-law reside in Tacoma, Washington, where he is an active duty soldier in the United States Army.

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Steven Curtis

Dr. Steven Curtis

Interim Professor of Music (Choral)

Office: Catlett Music Center 127G
Email: scurtis@ou.edu

Steven Curtis, OU Regent’s Professor Emeritus, retired from the University of Oklahoma School of Music in 2011. He was a member of the faculty for twenty-one years where he taught conducting, vocal methods, graduate courses, supervised entry-year and student teachers, and directed choirs. He ended his career serving as the Director of the School of Music for his last six years at OU. After retirement, for four years, he taught a music methods course that he created while on the faculty. He founded the OU Friends of Music organization that supports OU music students with scholarship assistance.

He taught vocal music for a total of forty-seven years at the elementary, junior high, high school, and college levels. He has also conducted adult, community, and church choirs. Curtis holds the BME degree from Southeast Missouri State University, the Master of Music Education degree from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and the Ph.D. in Music Education from the University of Oklahoma.

He adjudicated choirs in the Midwest and Southwest and has conducted numerous honor choirs, all-state choirs, and choral workshops throughout the country. He has directed all-state choirs in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, and Missouri. He also frequently worked with public school students within the states of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois. He has a research interest in the adolescent male changing voice and shared his research at numerous music conferences. His choirs have performed as invited honor groups at state, regional, and national conventions. He is currently in his thirty-fourth year as Director of Music at the First Christian Church in Norman, Oklahoma.

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Dr. Nathan Dougherty

Dr. Nathan Dougherty

Assistant Professor of Musicology

Email: nathan.k.dougherty-1@ou.edu
Office: Catlett Music Center 120

Nathan Dougherty is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches graduate courses in music history and directs the Collegium Musicum. He is a specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French song and song cultures, with broader interests in historical performance practices, gender studies, historiography, and the medical humanities. He has presented papers nationally and internationally at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and the France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918 network, as well as at the Rocky Mountain Music Scholars Conference, the Indiana University Historical Performance Conference, and the University of Oregon Musicking Conference. His research has been supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including a Richard A. Zdanis Research Scholarship Award, a travel grant from the M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet Fund, a Graduate Affiliateship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and a Case Western Reserve University Fellowship at the Library of Congress.

He also maintains an active career as a tenor and haute-contre, and has sung with many of the nation’s leading early music ensembles, including Apollo’s Fire, Les Délices, The Newberry Consort, The Thirteen, Atlanta Baroque, Bourbon Baroque, and Trobàr.

He received his PhD in Historical Musicology with an emphasis in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University in 2022. He holds degrees in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California and Vocal Performance from St. Olaf College.

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Siwon Kim

Siwon Kim

Graduate Assistant

Siwon Kim, originally from South Korea, is a first-year doctoral student in choral conducting at the University of Oklahoma. In his role as a graduate teaching assistant, he serves as the assistant conductor for the University Chorale.

Siwon holds a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Korea National University of Arts. He later pursued a second master’s degree in choral conducting at the University of Louisville, where he studied under Dr. Kent Hatteberg and Dr. Wonjoo Ahn.

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Kaycee Logsdon

Kaycee Logsdon

Graduate Assistant

Originally from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Kaycee Logsdon has been singing professionally for 25 years with ensembles in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, New York, and Connecticut, performing on some of the world's largest stages, from Carnegie Hall to Westminster Abbey. Kaycee received a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Central Missouri and Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Texas Tech University. Equally as comfortable behind the podium, Kaycee is currently serving as the Associate Artistic Director of the Tulsa Chorale and is also working toward her Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting at the University of Oklahoma with a special emphasis in Sacred Music. In addition to her studies, she is currently a staff singer at St. John's Episcopal Church in Tulsa, OK and upholds a busy schedule of singing and conducting choirs around the region. When not singing, conducting, or in classes, Kaycee enjoys petting dogs of all breeds and sizes, pub trivia, and attending Tulsa Oktoberfest.

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Esther Park

Esther Park

Graduate Assistant

Esther Park is a DMA choral conducting student and graduate assistant at the University of Oklahoma. She holds a BM in Church Music from the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Heidelberg, Germany. She also holds a MM in Song Accompaniment and Vocal Coaching from the Hochschule für Musik in Mainz, Germany; and the MM in Choral Conducting from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. At Texas State University, Esther served as graduate assistant to Dr. Craig Hella Johnson, conducting Aurora Voce, TXST Men’s Choir, the Texas State Chorale, and the Texas State University Singers. Prior to arriving at OU, Esther served as Director of Music at First United Methodist Church in Luling, Texas. She currently serves as Director of Music at First United Methodist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma.