Earl Rivers

Earl Rivers is Professor Emeritus of Conducting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Over a 47-year career at CCM, he conducted staged productions of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion and Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, and acclaimed regional premieres of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls and El Niño, Tan Dun’s Water Passion after St. Matthew, Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 5 -Requiem, Bardo and Nirmanakaya, and Krzysztof Penderecki’s Credo. For 20 seasons (1998-2008), Rivers was music director and conductor of Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, and since 1974, he has served as director of music for Knox Presbyterian Church, commissioning and premiering 15 new works and offering Cincinnati premieres of J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ, and Vaughan Williams’ Hodie. Guest conducting this season includes J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor with South Korea’s National Chorus and Orchestra.