Dr. DeVenney holds degrees in conducting from Iowa State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is professor of music at West Chester University, where he directs the select Concert Choir and the Men's Chorus and guides the graduate program in choral studies. For over a decade, he was music director of the Reading Choral Society, a highly regarded community chorus and one of America's oldest musical ensembles. Under his leadership, the Society pursued a much expanded repertory and greatly increased its educational programs. He founded and for seven seasons served as music director of VocalBaroque, a professional chamber choir in Columbus, Ohio. He has held faculty appointments at Otterbein College, the University of Arizona, and Virginia Tech.

Dr. DeVenney has made substantive contributions to scholarship in American choral music through his fourteen books and dozens of articles. In addition to a five-volume annotated bibliographic guide to American choral music, he has written the first historical survey of this important repertory, as well as books on opera, musical theatre, and cultural studies. The Choral Journal called him "one of the most industrious scholars on the current scene," while MLA Notes labeled his contributions to the study of American choral music "an impressive achievement." For fifteen years, he was General Editor of the Research Memorandum Series published by Chorus America. His many arrangements of American folk songs and original choral works appear frequently on concerts (some published by Roger Dean and Yelton Rhodes Music); his critical edition of John Knowles Paine's Mass in D, an important nineteenth-century American masterwork, will soon be issued (Serenissima Music); and his three-volume textbook series Conducting Choirs has recently been published (Roger Dean). Dr. DeVenney is Contributing Editor for choral music for the new Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition.