2011 Conductors Team
Dr. Eric Conway
National Conductor
Morgan State University
Dr. Eric Conway is currently the Director of the Morgan State University Choir as well as Chairperson of the Fine Arts Department. He has served as Associate Conductor and principal accompanist for the Morgan State University Choir for the past twenty years under the leadership of the late Nathan Carter.
He received his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University where he majored in Piano Performance and minored in Conducting. While at the Peabody, Conway was a recipient of the prestigious Liberace Scholarship, as well as a winner in the Yale Gordon Concerto Competition where earned the honor of playing Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra.
Some of his significant accomplishments as pianist include a tour of Eastern Africa, sponsored by the United States Information Agency. One of the highlights of the tour was a solo performance for Madagascan television and radio. He has performed as soloist with several orchestras including, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Concert Artists, Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, Georgetown University Orchestra, and the Millbrook Orchestra in Shepardstown, West Virginia. In January, 2006 he performed Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to wide acclaim.
Dr. Conway is also sought after as a collaborative artist. He has worked with several leading artists including Trevor Wye, Hillary Hahn, Daniel Heifetz, William Brown, Janice Chandler, to name a few. He is also an orchestral pianist for the Baltimore Symphony. In 1994 and 1997, he toured with the orchestra to Eastern Asia.
Dr. Conway's choral accomplishments include working closely with some of the greatest conductors of the 20th Century including Robert Shaw, Sir Nevelle Mariner, and Donald Neuen. In 2001, he was chorusmaster for the Baltimore Symphony Chorus' performance of the Verdi Requiem. He travels around the mid-Atlantic area giving Choral Master Classes and workshops for Collegiate and High School levels. In June of 2006, Dr. Conway was Chorusmaster for performances of Mahler Symphony #2, ending the tenure of Baltimore Symphony's music director, Yuri Temirkanov.
Most recently, he conducted the forces of both the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Soulful Symphony in the Meyerhoff Hall's Annual Martin Luther King Concert. In addition to his musical accomplishments, he holds degrees in both Accounting and Business Management and is also a Certified Public Accountant. Dr. Conway is married to Bessie Elizabeth Conway, and they are blessed to have three sons, Eric, Jr.; Christopher; and Ryan.
Professor Johnella L. Edmonds
National Conductor
Virginia State University
Professor Johnella L. Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music, Art and Design at Virginia State University. She received the Bachelor Music Education degree from Howard University, and Master of Music degree in piano performance from the Catholic University of America. She studied choral conducting with Evelyn White, Warner Lawson, Frauke Hasseman, and Gunther Theuring, former director of the Vienna Boys Choir, in Vienna, Austria.
Dr. Edmonds is director of the Virginia State University Concert Choir, a position she assumed in 1984. Under her leadership, the choir has presented concerts in several prestigious venues including the Virginia Music Educators Association, Hot Springs, Virginia; Southern Division of the Music Educators National Conference, Louisville, KY; National Association for the Study and Performance of Afro-American Music-2009 Conference. Edmonds has prepared the VSU Concert Choir to perform with the internationally acclaimed Ethos Percussion Ensemble, Richmond and Petersburg Symphonies, and for the Smithsonian Institution's Wade in the Water series, Bernice Reagon, Curator Emerita. The conductor performs as a singer, pianist, and frequently serves as choral clinician and adjudicator for district music festivals in the Mid-Atlantic Region. She has presented workshops for educators and students in Virginia's public schools, colleges and universities.
Dr. Edmonds has appeared with the Richmond and Petersburg Symphony Orchestras as mezzo-soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah and Vaughan Williams' Hodie. In 2007, she created the role of Mrs. Tibbs in the Petersburg Symphony Orchestra's World Premiere of The Edge of Glory, an opera by the Petersburg composer Emory Waters. Prior to joining the Virginia State University music faculty, Edmonds served as Associate Director of Choral Activities at Tuskegee Institute (now University), and instructor in music education and piano for Saint Augustine's College, Raleigh, North Carolina. During her tenure at Virginia State University, she received the Ruth and Spencer Timms' Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching.
Dr. Edmonds holds membership in Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honorary, Sigma Alpha Iota Music Fraternity, Pi Lambda Theta, and Alpha Mu Gamma. She is a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educators National Conference.
Dr. Gloria Harrison Quinlan
National Conductor
Huston Tillotson University
Dr. Gloria Harrison Quinlan, a native of Houston, Texas, received the Bachelor of Music Education degree in Voice from Texas Southern University, the Master of Music in Voice from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice from The University of Texas at Austin. She has significant experience in teaching voice, conducting choirs, and administering a music department on the college and university level. After a position as Assistant Professor of Music at Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, she was Associate Professor of Music at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and is presently Professor of Music and Chair of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department at Huston-Tillotson University, Austin, Texas.
Dr. Quinlan has enjoyed success as a performer, in opera, as a soloist with ensembles, and as a recitalist, throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Significant performances include: soprano soloist in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Caribbean Chorale and Puerto Rico Symphony; soprano soloist with the Austin Civic Chorus and Symphonietta, the Capitol City Men's Chorus, Austin Singers in a performance of the Brahms Requiem and just recently recorded with the Trombone Choir of The Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin. She has also performed with the Scott Joplin Orchestra of Houston, Texas.
Dr. Quinlan has also received acclaim as a choral conductor. She founded the University Concert Choir at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, and VI. Her choir at Huston-Tillotson University performed for President Jimmy Carter. President George W. Bush invited the Huston-Tillotson Choir to perform at the opening of the Texas State Museum (a performance broadcast nationwide). Dr. Quinlan was also selected as the choir conductor for the Lady Bird Johnson funeral service. She studied voice with Ruth Stewart (Texas Southern University), Larry Day (Colorado State University) and the late Martha Deatherage (University of Texas), and coached with Gerard Souzay, the late Darryl Hobson-Byrd and the late David Garvey. Dr. Quinlan studied choral conducting with the late Ruthabel Rollins at TSU.
Honors include the Danforth Compton Fellowship, Graduate Opportunity Fellowship, and a Graduate Scholarship Award from General Conference, Seventh Day Adventist Church. She also received the Fine Arts Award as an outstanding Music Educator by the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa, Inc., Delta Beta Chapter, and the Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts award from the National Women of Achievement, Inc. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Music Educators National Conference, Texas Music Educators Conference, American Choral Directors Association and Texas Choral Directors Association. Dr. Quinlan is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Dr. Quinlan and husband Quincy Quinlan make their home in Austin, Texas with their son Mykal.
2011 Regional Training Team
Royzell L. Dillard
Hampton University
Edryn J. Coleman
Lincoln University of Pennsylvania
Travis W. Alexander
North Carolina A&T University
Dr. Michael J. Bates,
University of Arkansas Pine Bluff
Dr. Marcia Hood
Albany State University
Linda Kershaw
Bendict College
Jason Ferdinand
Oakwood University
Dr. Horace Carney
Alabama A&M University
W. Cortez Castilla
Jackson State University
A. Jan Taylor
Prairie View A&M University
