James Erb
American conductor
James "Jim" Bryan Erb (January 25, 1926 – November 11, 2014) was an American composer, arranger, musicologist, and conductor. The founding conductor of the Richmond Symphony Chorus, Erb led that chorus from 1971 to 2007 while also directing chorus activities at the University of Richmond, where he was for a while chair of the music department. Erb is most broadly known for his arrangement of the folk song "Shenandoah". He also edited the Bärenreiter edition of Orlando di Lasso's complete Magnificats.
Career
Erb was born in La Junta, Colorado. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, Erb completed his undergraduate education in music at Colorado College. He also studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. He later earned a master's degree in voice at Indiana University School of Music and a doctorate from Harvard University.
He began teaching music at a junior high school in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Beginning in 1954 he taught music and conducted the choirs and glee clubs at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, where he taught until his retirement in 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Erb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.