Nancy Menk

Nancy Menk holds the Mary Lou Morris and Judd Leighton Chair in Music at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. At Saint Mary's, Dr. Menk conducts the Women's and Collegiate Choirs, teaches Conducting, and prepares the Madrigal Singers for the annual Christmas Madrigal Dinners. Under her direction, the Women's Choir has performed on tour throughout the United States, and it regularly commissions and records new works for women's voices. The choir also hosts the annual Saint Mary's College High School Women's Choir Festival in which choirs from four states perform for each other and a panel of commentators.

Dr. Menk holds the B.S. and the M.A. in Music Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the M.M. and the D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She has conducted high school choirs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she founded the Pittsburgh Youth Chorus to perform annually with the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra.

She is founder and conductor of the South Bend Chamber Singers, an ensemble of 28 select singers from the Michiana area. From 1994 to 2001, the Chamber Singers were featured annually on The First Art, heard nationally on over 275 public and commercial radio stations. In 2000, the Singers were one of five finalists for the prestigious Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, given annually by Chorus America, and in 2004 they won the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming.

One of two American conductors selected to participate in the National Conductor's Symposium with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, Dr. Menk was also selected as a conducting participant for the 1992 Oregon Bach Festival.

Dr. Menk is Editor of the Saint Mary's College Choral Series, a distinctive series of select music for women's voices published by Earthsongs of Corvallis, Oregon. Along with Dr. James Laster of Shenandoah Conservatory, she has prepared an annotated bibliography of women's choir resources which has been published by the American Choral Foundation.

In 1998 she served as conductor for the Hong Kong Summer Music Camp Children's Choir, and she spent the winter of 2000 on a sabbatical trip to Korea, where she worked with several choirs in Seoul. She has conducted three concerts of music for chorus and orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and will return there in November 2005 to conduct a concert of music by American composer Gwyneth Walker. In February 2005 she conducted the Saint Mary's College Women's Choir in concert for the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Menk serves regularly as a guest conductor and choral adjudicator throughout the United States. She has conducted All-State Choirs in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Dakota, Delaware, and Indiana.