Dr Christopher Kiver is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Pennsylvania State University where he directs the Concert Choir, Glee Club, and University Choir and oversees the graduate choral conducting program, teaching classes in choral conducting and choral literature. He founded and directed The Orpheus Singers and served as guest conductor of the Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra.
Choirs under Chris’s direction have performed at numerous state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and National Association for Music Education (NAfME). With the Penn State Concert Choir, Kiver directed performances of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning composition, Anthracite Fields, and David Lang’s before and after nature with Bang on a Can All-Stars and led the choir in an appearance with the Rolling Stones. He has been engaged as a guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator in the United States, Australia, China, and New Zealand. In July 2025 he spent six weeks touring Australia as the featured clinician of the Australian National Choral Association (ANCA).
As well as teaching and performing, from 2002-2021 Chris served as Director of Music Ministries at First Baptist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and University Baptist and Brethren Church in State College, Pennsylvania.
For ACDA, Chris currently serves as Past President of the Eastern Region. He is a former national Repertoire and Standards chair for Men’s/TTBB Choirs and is past president of the Pennsylvania state chapter.
While living in Brisbane, Australia from 1996-2002, Chris conducted the Brisbane Chorale, Brisbane Concert Choir, Queensland University Musical Society, Blackstone-Ipswich Cambrian Choir, and was Director of Choirs at Brisbane Boys’ College. He was a part-time teacher for various choral courses at the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, and Griffith University. In 2001, Chris was guest conductor for the massed choir at the Goodwill Games Gala Concert in Brisbane, the Queensland Pops Orchestra, and the Australian Intervarsity Choral Festival in Adelaide.
A native of the UK, Chris has received numerous prizes and scholarships including a Fulbright Award, and the 2002 Sydney World Choral Symposium Foundation Scholarship. In February 2006 he was a double Grammy Award winner (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as a chorus master for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Chris was the recipient of Penn State University’s President’s Award for Engagement with Students in 2017. He is a graduate of the University of London, Florida State University, and the University of Michigan where he received the D.M.A. in choral conducting.