Email - herrdam@hotmail.com

As Minister of Music at Immanuel, Dr. McConnell plays for weekly liturgies, conducts the Senior Choir, and oversees the training and rehearsing of six other choirs. The Senior Choir regularly performs major works, and in the last few years has performed Requiems by Rutter and Faure, the first and third part of Handel's Messiah and the first cantata from Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Dr. McConnell is also the Choral Director at Lehigh Carbon Community College, where he started the college choir in February 2005. The choir currently meets on Monday evenings and is made up of current students and faculty, alumni and members of the community.

Dr. McConnell received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in December 2002. At Cincinnati his teachers included Earl Rivers, John Leman, Richard Westenberg, Fiora Contino, and Vance George. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. McConnell also holds degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey and Temple University in Philadelphia. He has attended the prestigious Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestral Musicians in Hancock, Maine, the South Carolina Conductor's Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, and The Conductors Institute at Bard College.

Dr. McConnell's dissertation at Cincinnati examined and compared the six published completions of the Mozart Requiem. His thesis was submitted by the choral faculty at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music to contend for the Julius Herford Prize, a prestigious award for excellent scholarship and analysis in a thesis or dissertation. In addition, he has presented papers on completions of the Mozart Requiem at the national American Choral Directors Association in San Antonio, Texas, the College Music Society Northeast Chapter Conference in Lewiston, Maine, and a concert by the Central City Chorus in New York City.