Judith Willoughby is the Wanda L. Bass Professor of Conducting and Choral Music Education at Oklahoma City University and Artistic Director of the Youth Choral Program of the Canterbury Choral Society. At OCU, she conducts Ad Astra Women's Chorus, University Singers and teaches courses in music education. Professor Willoughby was inducted, as a National Arts Associate, into the Alpha Zeta chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota, at Oklahoma City University in April 2008. As a guest conductor, clinician and conference headliner, Willoughby has lead choruses and orchestras in the world's major concert halls in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Australia and Asia. Highlights of her 2008-2009 season include concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City and also Yale University. She is the headliner for the inaugural 2009 Charleston International Festival of Choirs. Willoughby has been an active honor choir conductor for the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), conducting honor choruses for one national, five divisional and numerous state conventions. She has been privileged to conduct forty-four all state choruses in the U.S.
Willoughby served on the board of Chorus America for nine years, including two terms as secretary, and has been active on that organization's conducting taskforce where she co-developed two national choral/orchestral conducting master classes and served as faculty on several others. She was state president for Pennsylvania's ACDA, the Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Association and Pennsylvania Presenters. A noted pedagogue, Judith Willoughby taught in the Summer Institute programs of Eastman's School of Music and Westminster Choir College. During her years in Chicago, as a member of the conducting and music education faculty at Northwestern University, she was also choral director for Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art during its recreation of Dutch choreographer Beppie Blankert's dance, Odyssey, to the music of Louis Andriessen. She was also the first (and only) female invited to conduct the William Ferris Chorale on a regular
subscription concert.
Professor Willoughby is a graduate of Temple (MMus) and Northwestern (BMus) Universities and a student of Natalie Hinderas (piano),
Elaine Brown (choral conducting) and William Smith and Max Rudolph (instrumental conducting).
Willoughby edits a choral series published by Alliance Music, has contributed to articles published in ACDA's Choral Journal, wrote a chapter for The Choral Director's Cookbook published by Meredith Music, was on the editorial board for two Chorus America publications: Leading the Successful Chorus and Conductors Count: What Chorus Boards, Music Directors and Administrators Need to Know, and she recently authored a chapter in Way Over in Beulah Lan': Understanding and Performing the Negro Spiritual, by Dr. Andre Thomas, which was published in 2007 by Heritage Music Press.
