Dr. Kevin
Meidl is director of choirs and music department chair at Appleton
West High School. He has taught junior high school and high school
choral music in Appleton for the past twenty-six years. In addition,
he is the artistic director and principal conductor with the Appleton
Boychoir…a treble choir of young boys currently celebrating their
thirtieth season.
In 2006 Meidl
co-founded the Badger State Girl Choir in partnership with the Valley
Academy for the Arts in Neenah, Wisconsin. As conductor and artistic
director of this ensemble, he leads nearly one hundred elementary and
middle school girls in a diverse performance-based program inclusive
of both music and dance.
Meidl is
currently president of the North Central American Choral Directors
Association. In this position, he oversees the professional
development of several thousand school, church, community and
university conductors from across the upper Midwest. He serves as a
voting member of the national choral directors board, and is past
president of the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association.
Meidl’s choirs
have performed for state division and national conferences of the
American Guild of Organists, the Organization of American Kodály
Educators, the Music Educators National Conference, the American
Choral Directors Association, the Intercollegiate Men’s Chorus
Association, and the Wisconsin Music Teachers Association. They have
performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Fox Valley Symphony, the
Green Bay Symphony, and for the official presidential visit of George
W. Bush in Appleton. He has conducted choirs for ceremonies
commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France,
for Pope John Paul II in Rome, and in some thirty other countries
around the world.
Meidl’s choirs
have produced a dozen recordings and have been featured on national
radio programs in the Netherlands, Russia, and Mexico. Graduates of
his choir programs have entered the ranks of the music education
profession and are creating choral music across the country. In the
Appleton Public Schools alone there are three music educators who are
graduates of his program
Meidl has
studied conducting with Constantina Tsolainou, currently director of
choral activities at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia;
with Kate Tamarkin, music director of the Charlottesville and the
University of Virginia Symphonies in Charlottesville, Virginia; and
with Robert Harris and John Paynter at Northwestern University. He
holds degrees from Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and the
School of Music at Northwestern University. In addition, he has
studied Kodály methods at Silver Lake College and is completing
post-doctoral work at Boston University.
As an
adjudicator, conductor, clinician, and lecturer, Meidl is in high
demand across the United States including recent events in Virginia,
Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota. He was a
featured presenter at the National Music Educators Convention in
Phoenix, Arizona, and most recently was the keynote speaker for the
Iowa Choral Directors Association Convention. He is widely published
in professional journals across America.
A leader in
international choral music education, Meidl created the International
Youth Symposium on Choral Music in Altötting, Germany, and the
national conference for high school students considering careers in
choral music called NextDirection. He has developed various
initiatives in support of music education in Wisconsin including
confabs for choral directors, music repertoire banks, summer choir
camps and the highly successful “Immersion Day” concept for divisional
ACDA conferences. His most recent initiative is the Summer School
Consortium Choir Camps…entering its fourth year, this program has
impacted hundreds of children from thirteen school districts across
the Fox River Valley.
Dr. Meidl is a
member of the American Choral Directors Association, the Music
Educators National Conference, the International Federation for Choral
Music, the Organization of American Kodály Educators, Pi Kappa Lambda,
and past president of the Gamma Zeta Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.
He was selected as Secondary Teacher of the Years in 1996 for the
Appleton Area School District and most recently, in 2008, as the
Helble high school Teacher of the Year. His biography is listed in
recent editions of Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who Among America’s
Teachers, Who’s Who in the Midwest, Who’s Who in American Education,
and several other honorary publication.
