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David Morrow is the distinguished conductor of the Morehouse Glee Club, and has served on the Morehouse
College music faculty since 1981. A native of Rochester, New York, Morrow has studied conducting with
Wendell Whalum, Thomas Hilbish, Elmer Thomas, John Leman, Earl Rivers, Elizabeth Green, Teri Murai, Fiora
Contino and Donald Neuen. He is also the conductor of the Wendell Whalum Community Chorus.
©
2007 All Rights Reserved.
From the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:
African-American named conductor of Atlanta Singers
For ensemble, sheer talent is color blind
By PIERRE RUHE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/20/2007
The City Too Busy to Hate is one of the great choir towns in America. But it's also been a town slow to integrate those singing traditions at the highest levels.
Until now: Tonight, choral conductor David Morrow makes his debut as music director of the Atlanta Singers, one of the region's elite vocal ensembles.
Since 1987, Morrow has been choral director of Morehouse College's acclaimed glee club and, for several years, led a choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The Atlanta Singers, founded in 1976, draws its membership from local professional singers and the best of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus.
"This group makes music at the very highest level," says Morrow, "so I can start where other choir directors finish. They come to the first rehearsal so well prepared we can spend our time on [matters] a lot more subtle and sophisticated than most choirs."
Morrow, 46, appears to have broken an invisible barrier that was rejected long ago yet rarely, if ever, crossed: He's the first African-American in memory to take charge of one of the top-tier (and predominantly white) choirs in Atlanta. Without great fanfare, the move might signal a new era in local cultural politics.
Morrow notes that while the a capella, or unaccompanied, singers have always had a broad repertoire, from European classics to hymns, spirituals and folk songs, his mission is to expand that range further, with "as much authenticity as I can provide."
"I can share traditions from the [black] community," he says of his new gig, "but I'm fundamentally eclectic. I try to combine everything I've learned. We were rehearsing a spiritual and one singer joked, 'You can show us how it goes.' "
Morrow is the group's third music director, following co-founder Kevin Culver, who retired in 1992, and David Brensinger.
Cheryl Lower helped launch the group and serves as its executive director. She's also sung in the ASO Chamber Chorus since its earliest days under choral legend Robert Shaw, himself a tireless champion of integration and civil rights.
In hiring a new conductor, she says, "we needed someone who'd push us. We didn't want stagnation. David brings a whole new set of skills and background to the group, and he was easily the best candidate [out of 20] — he's got a cherubic personality and he's musically disciplined and brilliant."
The Atlanta Singers weren't looking for any particular traits for their new leader, she points out, just the most skilled musician. Despite the metro area's famously tolerant racial attitudes, she adds, "everyone is aware that those attitudes don't easily translate into music-making. The ASO tries but still can't figure out how to attract black musicians and audiences."
She speculates, "We're all stuck in our own performing rut, and the opportunities for blacks and whites to sing together just don't present themselves — it's more a habit at this point."
For Morrow, being first in his class is nothing new. Born in Rochester, N.Y., the son of a maintenance worker and a teacher's aid, he made music his ambition early in life, playing piano and percussion and singing in choirs. He followed his brother, Donald, now a composer, to Morehouse.
There David Morrow took flight, first as a Phi Beta Kappa scholar and then as class valedictorian. Broadly educated as a choral conductor, he earned a doctorate in Ohio and returned to Atlanta as Wendell Whalum's assistant at Morehouse.
The glee club has been a high-flying ambassador for the historically black men's college. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a member in the 1940s, its performances are regularly broadcast on National Public Radio, and it sings annually with the ASO.
When Whalum died suddenly in 1987, Morrow was handed the job, which he continues to hold.
When Morrow started with the Morehouse glee club, recalls Georgia Public Broadcasting host Terrance McKnight, who sang in the college group at the time of the transition, "there was concern that Whalum's visceral and very emotional approach would be lost, and that Morrow would be too intellectual and academic.
"That might have been David's education, but he's well-versed in a lot of choral traditions, in some ways incorporating the best of Whalum and the best of Shaw."
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