Paul Rardin, 2015-2019

Paul Rardin is Elaine Brown Chair of Choral Music and Chair of the Vocal Arts Department at Temple University, where he conducts the Concert Choir, teaches graduate conducting, and oversees the seven-choir program at Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance. Previously the Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia, he commissioned several works on behalf of the organization including Credo by Rollo Dilworth; and, conducted the Philadelphia premiere of Tan Dun's evocative Water Passion of Saint Matthew as the headling concert for the national Chorus America conference which Mendelssohn Chorus hosted in 2019. 

Rardin previously taught at the University of Michigan and Towson University, where his choirs appeared with the Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Baltimore Choral Arts Society. His choirs have performed for NCCO national conferences and ACDA division conferences. In 2015 the Temple University Concert Choir performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Bernstein’s MASS under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and in 2016 the ensemble performed Bach motets with Helmuth Rilling.

Rardin has served as a guest conductor for all-state choirs in seventeen states, for divisional honor choirs for the ACDA and Music Educators National Conference, and for Manhattan Concert Productions at Lincoln Center. He has presented clinics for state, regional, and national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association. His engagements for 2017-2018 include guest conducting the California All-State Choir and conducting Vierne’s Messe Solenelle at Washington National Cathedral with Manhattan Concert Productions.



Rardin is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Michigan, where he received the M.M. in composition and the D.M.A. in conducting. He has studied conducting with Theodore Morrison, Jerry Blackstone, and Gustav Meier, and composition with Leslie Bassett, George Wilson, and Robert Suderburg. He has also participated in conducting master classes with Helmuth Rilling, Charles Bruffy, and Dale Warland. His arrangements of spirituals and folk songs are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and his articles, many on the topic of contemporary music, have appeared in the ACDA publications Choral Journal, Troubadour, Resound, and Bel Canto.