Rebecca Gruber

Teaching Artist of Voice
Office Location: 235 Fine Arts Center
515-271-4031
rebecca.gruber@drake.edu

Dr. Gruber is in her second year on the Music Theater faculty, teaching music theory and voice. She has been the Artistic Director/Conductor of the Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus for the last fifteen years and counts it a privilege to be one of only a few women conductors to fill that role. She has overseen three commissions, three performances at the national convention of the LGBT choral organization, GALA; several concert seasons with the best collaborative partners in the area, and a significant number of outreach performances to groups who advocate for civil justice and equality. 

Dr. Gruber received the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting at the University of Nebraska. She holds a Master of Sacred Music from Perkins School of Theology and a Master of Music in choral conducting from Southern Methodist University. Her undergraduate degree in voice/music education is from Simpson College. Dr. Gruber maintains an active voice studio in Des Moines and is a Licensed Kindermusik Educator at Pied Piper Studios.

As soprano soloist, Dr. Gruber has been heard in the works of J.S. Bach and C.P.E. Bach with the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh, and in the Haydn Mass in C and the Beethoven Mass in C for the Chautauqua Series at First United Methodist Church, Dallas. She performed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem, Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli, and The Company of Heaven by Benjamin Britten on the Westminster Fine Arts Series, and Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 42 at Carnegie Hall.

As festival conductor and clinician, Dr. Gruber has worked with singers at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, in the C. A. C. T. U. S. (Creative Arts Camp-Together Under the Sun) fine arts camp, and with the adult, young adult, and children’s music programs at the American Baptist Summer Music Conference in Greenlake, Wisconsin. She has conducted the Des Moines Elementary Honor Choir, the Southwest Iowa Honor Choir, Choristers Guild Children’s Choir Festival in Rochester, Minnesota, and the Richner-Strong Church Music Institute at Colby College in Maine. She created the dramatic/music/dance presentations at the Smithsonian Institution for awardees of the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy in Washington, D.C. Lorenz publishes her children’s music literacy curriculum, Stepping Stones.