Gregory R. Gentry

Gregory R. Gentry is in his sixth season (2011/12) as chorus master of The Phoenix Symphony.
Under Dr. Gentry's leadership, the Phoenix Symphony Chorus has grown in size and successfully taken on extraordinarily challenging new repertoire, including Grey's Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio, Golijov's Ainadamar, and Adams's Nixon in China as well as On the Transmigration of Souls. The February 2008 world premiere of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio was followed by the Phoenix Symphony Chorus reprising their work with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra in July 2008, punctuated by the March 2009 Naxos commercial recording release of the work. In versatile contrast, select members of the Phoenix Symphony Chorus performed to sold-out audiences for the May 2009 concert A Salute to Rodgers & Hammerstein. 

February 2009 marked Dr. Gentry's Phoenix Symphony conducting debut, with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. He appeared again at Carnegie Hall to conduct Mozart's Coronation Mass in 2010, after previous appearances conducting Schubert’s Mass in G and the Brahms Schicksalslied. Originally, both a singer and percussionist, Gentry performed under the baton of Dave Brubeck, Aaron Copland, Karel Husa, Jorge Mester and Robert Shaw, later evolving his own conducting technique through studies with Eph Ehly and George Lynn, as well as with Brian Priestman and Dale Warland.
Dr. Gentry has worked in many facets of choral research and conducting. His edition of "Dnes Hhristos" (Musica Russica, 2009), Vasilii Titov's Seventeenth-Century Moscow Baroque Liturgical Choral Concerto for 12 voices” premiered in Russian by the Oregon Repertory Singers in 2001” is the first-ever published Western edition of this work. His edition of Jean Philippe Rameau's "Cor meum et caro mea" from Quam dilecta tabernacula premiered in February 2005 at the American Choral Directors Association national convention in Los Angeles. 

Dr. Gentry is the Director of Choral Performance at the Arizona State University School of Music, where he conducts the Symphonic Chorale, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting, literature and score study, oversees seven choral ensembles, and administers the doctoral, masters and undergraduate choral conducting programs (including approximately 500 students engaged in choral music studies). 

Among many professional organizations, Dr. Gentry is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, the National Association for Music Education, and the College Music Society. He is President-Elect of the Arizona Choral Directors Association, and founding director of Southwest Liederkranz. 

Gregory Gentry earned his doctorate from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.