Jeff Buettner

Jeffrey Buettner, DMA is Director of Choral Activities and Christian A. Johnson Professor of Music at Middlebury College, where he conducts the Middlebury College Choir and teaches conducting, vocal ensemble performance, and the first year seminar “Singing Communities.” His teaching explores music engagement as pedagogy in the liberal arts, and students in his ensembles and courses perform, present, create and engage musically in local community and school settings. He is co-founder/music director of the Middlebury Bach Festival/Bach Concerts, and prepares music for the annual Lessons and Carols for Advent and Christmas at Middlebury and for college services. Jeff has co-produced other programs on campus including the Celtic Concerts and United for Ukraine.

Jeff’s has conducted honor choirs in Vermont and led choirs at choral festivals in the Midwest and Northeast, including the New York Summer Music Festival. He has prepared choruses for the Opera Company of Middlebury and conducted productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (2015) and Puccini’s La Boheme (2008). Jeff led the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association choruses 2007-2015.

Jeff Buettner has traveled to Ukraine for research in Romani music on several occasions since 1999, and as a Fulbright Scholar in 2010 to Kharkiv State University of Arts, where he conducted the University Choir. He has presented his research of Romani vocal music (“Gypsy Choirs”) of Ukraine and Russia at national and international conferences, including the 2015 ACDA national conference, and he has presented performance study of Gluck’s Orfeo and Handel’s Esther at regional conferences.

Jeff is organist at the the Congregational Church of Middlebury, where he has played since 2007. He promotes folk and traditional music collaborations as a singer and instrumentalist, and plays bodhrán, trichordo bouzouki, accordion and other instruments. Jeff’s arrangements and compositions include American folk, neotraditional, and popular music styles, and he has written and performed several arrangements of American and Romani songs in ongoing study of Ukrainian Romani culture.

Jeff received the DMA from Michigan State University, MM from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of  Music and BM from St. Olaf College.