Dr. Terre Johnson

About Dr. Johnson

Terre Johnson holds degrees in choral music education and conducting from Troy University, Auburn University, and Florida State University, and has served as Chair of Visual and Performing Arts at Clayton State University from 2019-2023. In July of 2023 he assumed the role of Chair of the Fred and Dinah Gretsch School of Music at Georgia Southern University.

Dr. Johnson’s career has included conducting every kind of choir, from church music to professional conducting to community organizations to teaching in public schools and universities. He founded and conducted the acclaimed Birmingham Chamber Chorus and the Southeastern Chamber Orchestra. A Life Member of the American Choral Directors Association, he has served as National Chair for Music in Worship and as National Coordinator for Lifelong Singing, providing resources and advocacy for those who conduct in houses of worship or community chorus settings. In addition, he created and served as Editor for ACDA’s national publication for Music in Worship, “Hallelujah, Amen!” Dr. Johnson was Conductor-in-Residence for Midamerica Productions in New York from 2001-2005, as well as Music Director of the New Jersey Choral Society. Under the auspices of Midamerica Productions, his fourteen concerts in Carnegie Hall have met with critical success. While in New York he became closely associated with composer and conductor John Rutter, and in addition to sharing the concert stage, traveled around the country to prepare over 100 choruses for performances with him. While a Graduate Assistant at Florida State University, he became accompanist and rehearsal assistant to Robert Shaw, who visited the campus frequently to conduct concerts. He has taught in public middle and high schools, as well as in small colleges and large universities.

Dr. Johnson is receiving increasing acclaim as a composer, with 25 pieces currently in print. In May of 2014 he conducted the premiere of his first extended work, “Missa Femina,” for treble chorus and orchestra in Carnegie Hall. His second extended work, “Song of the Captive,” was premiered under his baton in Florence, Italy, with the Florence Chamber Orchestra in 2016. And in 2017 he shared conducting duties with his daughter, Cameron Johnson, in the Carnegie Hall premiere of “The Wind,” an extended work commemorating the tenth anniversary of the destruction of Alabama’s Enterprise High School by a tornado. His arrangement of the hymn “Come, Ye Disconsolate” is a best seller, and has been recorded numerous times, including by the St. Olaf Choir and the Baylor University A Cappella Choir. In June of 2019 he conducted the world premiere of his “Story of a Soul,” in Florence, Italy, with the Florence Chamber Orchestra, and his “Magnificat” received its premiere in Carnegie Hall in 2022. In 2023 his “Te Deum” was premiered by the Masterworks Choir and Orchestra of South Carolina. Other recent premieres have included a commission by the Turtle Creek Chorale in Dallas, a series of pieces for the Georgia Boy Choir, and multi-year commissions for the Luther College “Christmas at Luther” broadcasts.

In 2006 Terre Johnson served as Guest Conductor and Assistant Artistic Director for the Voices in the House Festival in the Sydney Opera House, and held similar positions in the International Haydn Festival 2009 in Vienna, and in the International Festival of the Aegean in Greece in 2010. His choirs have received invitations to perform at ACDA conferences, in the Warsaw Mozart Festival in 1995, and in the Rome Easter Festival in 1999. In recent years he has guest-conducted three opera productions for Samford University, two music theatre productions and an opera production at Troy University, and two concerts with the Huxford Symphony Orchestra of the University of Alabama, and he has served the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra as its Managing Director.

Last updated: 12/14/2023