Richard Bjella, associate professor of music and director of choral studies, has a hands-on approach to vocal music -- actually, it's more of a "put your hands together" approach. Whether presenting a session on "Kinesthetic Solutions" to a conference of choral music educators or using what he calls "active, physical ways" to meld a performing unit out of groups of singers who have just met for the first time -- e.g., the New Students Choir in the fall and the Alumni Choir in the spring -- he is a forceful advocate of rehearsal techniques that get people moving and assist them in singing freely and from the inside out. On that front, he is a state leader in Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance, an organization that encourages teachers to think holistically about their teaching and provides a model for thoughtful and meaningful rehearsal strategies based on affective teaching methods.
A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1984, in addition to conducting the nationally recognized Lawrence Concert Choir, he directs the Lawrence Chorale and the early music ensemble Collegium Musicum, as well as teaching conducting and choral methods and supervising student teachers. He is musical director of the regional White Heron Chorale, has been president of the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association, and currently serves as chair of the North Central Repertoire and Standards Committee of the American Choral Directors Association.
He has conducted in Prague, Paris, Lucerne, and London and at over 350 festivals in the United States, and his choirs have performed with distinguished conductors and international ensembles and at state, regional, and national music conventions. This past spring, he was co-director, with Christine Salerno, lecturer in music, of the Lawrence University Jazz Singers who won the 2002 Down Beat magazine outstanding performance award in the college vocal group division.