Ramseyer named director of choirs at QU

QUINCY — Kristin Ramseyer recently was hired as the director of choirs and assistant professor of voice at Quincy University.

She is a doctor of musical arts candidate at the University of Iowa, where she worked as a teaching assistant in choral conducting, sang with the premier choral ensemble Kantorei and studied conducting.

She worked as assistant instructional faculty from 2015-17 in the school of music at Illinois State University, where she taught voice, directed the women’s choir (now treble choir) and served on the staff of the school of theatre and dance and the school of music’s joint productions of “Street Scene” and “1776.” She completed dual master’s degrees in May 2015 in choral conducting and voice performance at Illinois State.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Illinois in 2003, Ramseyer spent the first 10 years of her career teaching chorus at Jeffrey C. Still Middle School in Aurora and Round Lake Senior High School in Round Lake, Ill., where she co-directed and accompanied several musicals such as “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” “Jane Eyre,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Into the Woods,” “Urinetown” and “Jekyll and Hyde.”

Ramseyer is an active soprano soloist. She was a soloist in the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra and Choir’s performance of Haydn’s “Missa in tempore belli” in 2018. Her operatic and musical theatre performances include Ravel’s “L’enfant et les sortilèges,” the premiere of Griffin Candey’s “Sweets by Kate,” Bizet’s “Carmen,” Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the premiere of Nicola Jane Buttigieg’s “Beethoven in Vienna” and Schwartz’s “Children of Eden.”

Ramseyer has served as a clinician, guest conductor and adjudicator at various district festivals, solo and ensemble contests, organization contests and church choir festivals. She was the music director at The Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Iowa City.