John Rommereim

John Rommereim is a musician who has pursued a varied career as a composer, conductor, keyboardist, and professor. He has written works for choir, solo voice, orchestra, string quartet, saxophone quartet, flute ensemble, guitar, organ, piano, and electronic media, as well as a chamber opera, and music for theater and film. The New York Times praised the “richly expressive” character of his work for voice and piano, Into the Still Hollow. 

His choral music has been performed by distinguished ensembles across the United States, as well as in China and Europe. He has collaborated with theater director Craig Quintero to create Rheingold (an original chamber opera commissioned by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture as part of a celebration of Wagner’s Ring Cycle) and The First Time I Walked on the Moon (2018), which was performed numerous times in Taiwan and South Korea. He also composed music for the short film, The Weight of Things (2022), which was screened by the Sydney Opera House. His works written for flutist Claudia Anderson have been performed at several National Flute Association conventions, and internationally by the ZAWA flute duo. His music is published by Walton Music, Oxford University Press, earthsongs, Alry Publications, and Roger Dean Publishing.  

As a conductor, he has led choirs on concert tours throughout the United States, and in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, and he has recorded albums of Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil, Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year, and Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Missa Omnium Sanctorum (in collaboration with the Lyra Baroque Orchestra.) As a harpsichordist, his playing can be heard on a Centaur album of Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s Op. 90 sonatas for flute and obligato harpsichord.  His translation of Pavel Chesnokov’s seminal treatise, The Choir and How to Direct It is published by Musica Russica.  

Rommereim is Blanche Johnson Professor of Music at Grinnell College, where he conducts the Grinnell Singers and the Grinnell Oratorio Society, and teaches composition.