Meet the Staff

ADMINISTRATION

MUSIC

Director of Music & Keyboard Artist

Rhonda Kwiecien

Rhonda Kweicien, Director of Music and Keyboard Artist, serves as organist at First Congregational Church and is a very successful and highly respected accompanist in Southeastern Wisconsin, having worked collaboratively with every imaginable performing force from solo musicians to all-state choirs. She also holds the position of collaborative keyboard artist at Carroll University, where she accompanies faculty and students in recital performances and also the choral ensembles.

Choir Director

Jeremiah Cawley

Jeremiah Cawley has led instrumental and vocal ensembles across the US and UK. He sings with the GRAMMY-nominated and EMMY-honored True Concord, founded the new music ensemble The Box Is Empty, and is an inaugural member of the new professional vocal ensemble withonevoice. His recorded work includes projects with The Riot Ensemble (London, UK), Solaris Vocal Ensemble (Seattle, WA), and Chamber Cartel (Atlanta, GA). Jeremiah’s work as tenor soloist is equally varied. He has recently been featured in the Des Moines Choral Festival’s performance of Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme; at the Omaha Under the Radar new music festival singing Desert Time for tenor and electronics by composer Nat Evans; and in the Madison Early Music Festival’s 400th anniversary performance of Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata virgine. Jeremiah’s credits as operatic music director include Puccini’s Suor angelica, Poulenc’s La voix humaine, and Britten’s Rape of Lucretia.

Jeremiah’s recent published scholarship includes “Understanding Editions: Using CPDL and IMSLP to Develop Early Music Intuition” in The Choral Conductor’s Companion. He has served on the organizing committee for the Oxford Conducting Institute, where he presented his most recent research, “Neurotic, Weak, and Ultramodern: Coded Language in Gestural Criticism,” exploring veiled discrimination in critical judgements of conductors Gustav Mahler and Antonia Brico. Jeremiah’s previous presentations include the paper “Unconducting Andriessen,” which examines the ways that the Dutch avantgarde altered the role of the conductor in music written after 1970. His dissertation, The Economic, Aesthetic, and Nonprofit Organization of Professional Vocal Ensembles, was nominated by the University of Washington for ACDA’s prestigious Herford Prize.

Jeremiah is a sought-after choral clinician, adjudicator, and conducting teacher. He received his MM and DMA from the University of Washington, where he was a student of Geoffrey Boers. Jeremiah is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choirs at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. He has previously held posts at Valparaiso University, Loras College, and Western Kentucky and Georgia State Universities. He lives in Milwaukee, WI with his wife Crystal.

FCC CHOIR – SECTION LEADERS