TOC Director: Tim Sharp

Tulsa Oratorio Chorus appointed Tim Sharp as TOC Artistic Director and Conductor, beginning with the 2009-2010 concert season.

After concluding a national search, reviewing 28 candidates, Emerson Parker, chairman of the TOC Search Committee, stated, “Dr. Sharp is an exceptional choice for this position. We believe that he will take us further along the path of choral excellence and that we will continue to grow artistically under his direction.”

Sharp follows the seven-year tenure of Don Studebaker, who retired from the TOC podium at the conclusion of the 2008-2009 TOC season.

Tim Sharp comes to Tulsa Oratorio Chorus having most recently been the conductor of the MasterSingers Chorale in Memphis, TN, where he was Dean of Fine Arts and Director of Choral Activities at Rhodes College. He resides in Edmond and is Executive Director of the American Choral Directors Association.

While Sharp embraces an eclectic approach to choral programming, he considers the German choral tradition of the 18th and 19th century as well as contemporary British and American choral works his conducting specialty.

Dr. Sharp’s research and writing focuses pedagogically in conducting and score analysis as evidenced by his publications Precision Conducting, Achieving Choral Blend and Balance, and Up Front! Becoming the Complete Choral Conductor.

His historical investigations include the publications The German Songbook in the Nineteenth Century, Memphis Music Before the Blues and Nashville Music Before Country. His most recent book is a history of the American Choral Directors Association.

Tim Sharp’s choral/orchestral performances over the last decade have routinely been at the podium of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and MasterSingers Chorale and the New England Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra with featured choirs at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

His choirs have toured domestically and abroad, singing in the world’s premiere concert and acoustic settings including St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Christ Church in Dublin, the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford, and Carnegie Hall.

Sharp holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the School of Church Music in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a Clare Hall Life Fellow at Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, has studied orchestral conducting at the Aspen School of Music, and has pursued additional studies through the Harvard NEH Medieval Sacred Music Studies program, and a Rotary Fellowship for study in Belgium.