Cathy Chamblee

Cathy Chamblee has always loved teaching, and her academic pursuits reflect this passion. She holds a B.S. degree in Special Education, magna cum laude, from James Madison University and a B.M. in Music Education, summa cum laude, from the University of Richmond, where she studied conducting with Richmond Symphony Chorus emeritus conductor James Erb. She also holds an M.M. in Choral Conducting from Emory University and a Ph.D. in Music Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Cathy received a Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded the Roy Jesson Prize for Conducting from the University of Richmond and was a selected associate for the Conductors Institute of South Carolina, where her teachers included Samuel Adler and Larry Newland. Cathy has taught courses in music history, theory, class piano, or has conducted choral ensembles at the University of Richmond, Wesleyan College, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as conductor and artistic director of the Petersburg Festival Chorus of Petersburg, Virginia, growing its ranks to sixty members and increasing attendance at the city’s annual music festival during her tenure. She is also a published music scholar.

Currently, Cathy serves as the Department of Music’s theory tutor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also hosts a weekly musicianship lab open to the entire Penn community. In both of these capacities she is motivated to help an ever-changing cross-section of students from divergent disciplines discover meaningful connections to music. Cathy also creates music scores for Ken Medema, having worked together on nearly sixty titles since 2016, including commissioned works for the Sacramento Master Singers and for the concert celebrating the opening of the Ken Medema Collection at Mercer University in 2017. She counts it an immeasurable honor to have collaborated with Ken on “Crossing Over.”