Department of Music’s Marvin set to retire after the school year

The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OfA) and the Harvard University Department of Music have announced that Jameson Marvin will retire as director of choral activities at Harvard. Marvin has a joint appointment in the OfA and Music Department, serving the latter as a senior lecturer on music. The 2009-10 academic school year will be his final year of service, with a leave scheduled for 2010-11.

“Jim Marvin has been a standard bearer for excellence in choral singing for over three decades at Harvard,” said OfA Director Jack Megan. “His knowledge of vocal literature and stylistic considerations through the centuries is vast. His enormous passion, impeccable technique, musical sensitivity, and attention to every detail have benefited many student singers and concert patrons over the years. He inherited a rich choral tradition from his illustrious predecessors and deepened it in a way that would make all of them proud.”

Marvin was appointed director of choral activities and senior lecturer on music in 1978.  He is responsible for the choral program at Harvard and conducts the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and he teaches courses in choral conducting, masterpieces of choral literature, and Renaissance performance practices.