The NIH Community Chorus performs in two NIH Community Orchestra concerts each season, including our holiday offering on Dec. 2, 2023 featuring John Corigliano’s Fern Hill; and selections from Handel’s The Messiah. The groups have recently performed works by Brahms, Berlioz, Mozart, Handel, and Copland. The Chorus performed a set of American songs at the NIH Community Orchestra & Chorus concert, June 3, 2023.
The chorus rehearses Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., September through early June, at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church.
Singers interested in joining should contact the director, Bob Johnson, 301-654-3380 or by email. There are no auditions, but the director may choose to conduct a vocal review to ensure that incoming singers will be singing the part that best suits the individual’s voice. There are openings in all parts, with tenors especially needed. Member dues support chorus operations.
Bob Johnson, Music Director
NIH Community Chorus
W. Robert (Bob) Johnson, Music Director of the NIHCO Community Chorus and The East Avenue Ensemble, has had a long and varied association with choral music. Beginning in Kansas, he sang in choirs and choruses for more than 60 years. Although he chose a career in the military and government service, he conducted choirs and choruses wherever his assignments took him. In Guam, he conducted the choir of Headquarters Chapel, Marianas Islands. Aboard USS NORTHAMPTON, he organized a ship’s choir which sang for church services at sea and at television stations, both in the U.S. and abroad, as the ship made port calls. Assigned to duty on Okinawa, he served for 16 months as Music Director at Sukiran Post Chapel, where the 70-voice chancel choir presented 14 major concerts to both Ryukyuan and American audiences as well as singing two Sunday morning services every week.
In 1971, he organized the Parkway Chorale as a noontime activity at the National Security Agency where he was employed. He retired from Federal service in May 1998 and relinquished the Music Directorship of the Chorale after 25 years on the podium of that chorus. In 1975, he founded The New Century Singers to provide volunteer singers an opportunity to participate in the Bicentennial by performing the music of American composers and arrangers. He retired that chorus in 2006 after 31 years of performing music by Americans. He sang in the Washington Cathedral Choral Society for 28 years and served on the Society’s Board of Trustees for 16+ years including a two-year term as President of the Board. The Society honored him with the award of its Medal of Merit.
As a member of the American Choral Directors Association, he served two terms as the President of the District of Columbia Chapter leading to that chapter’s merger with the Maryland Chapter. He served as the ACDA Eastern Division Conference Registrar for five consecutive biennial conferences beginning in 1994. Following four years as the Community Choir Chair for the Maryland/DC Chapter and one year as the Eastern Division Community Choir Chair, he was appointed as the ACDA National Chair for Community Choirs. He served in that office for the maximum six-year term, retiring in June 2009.
In September 2009, he was appointed as Chorus Master of the NIHCO Community Chorus, a position he currently fills in addition to serving as the Music Director of The East Avenue Ensemble.