Carolyn Eynon, Artistic Director
Founding Artistic Director of Carolyn Eynon Singers – 2007 to present
Carolyn has been singing in choirs or directing them since she was in elementary school in Michigan. At age 14, she accompanied all the high school choirs and at 17, won her high school’s European Music Study Scholarship which sent her to Europe upon graduation. She traveled to different chapels to hear organ recitals, and became acquainted with the French organist, Marcel Dupre, in whose Parisian home, she played organ for him. At the University of Michigan, she earned a bachelor and master of music degrees in choral music education, after which she enjoyed teaching all levels of choral music in St. Louis, Mo., and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. While teaching 6 choirs daily, Carolyn was voted to serve as the Michigan Honors Choir Director in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1978. After teaching for 8 years, she returned to Ann Arbor to begin her Doctorate of Music in Conducting, one of 2 people accepted. Women were rarely taken seriously during the early 1980s in the profession of conducting, but she stayed the course and finished her course work. During these years, she directed the 80 voice adult community Southfield Madrigal Chorale, in a suburb of Detroit. In her orchestral conducting she was the first woman to direct the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Plymouth Symphony Orchestras in Michigan. She was very honored to take her Southfield choir to perform at the ACDA regional conference in Ohio in 1982. Her high school choir was the first AMERICAN choir to travel behind the Iron Curtain to Romania and Bulgaria, where they sang in the languages of the countries in 1978.
When she moved to Az in 1994, the Scottsdale Symphony hired her to direct and build the Choir which premiered a contemporary Hungarian new composition in 1995. After one year, she created the community choir, The Arizona Arts Chorale which thrived for 12 years, until she founded her own choir, of 24 members; the CES in 2007.
She has had the pleasure of preparing choirs here for James Sedares, Jackson Berkey from Mannheim Steamroller, Robert Moody, Hermann Michael, Doc Severinsen, and Michael Cristie.
In 2010, she guest directed the Phoenix Symphony on Copland’s Rodeo, and later, Sleigh Bells, both memories she will treasure. She has had the pleasure of singing with John Rutter in Carnegie Hall when she took Arizona Arts Chorale and CES to perform with other choirs on stage. Jackson Berkey accompanied AAC at the Kennedy Center for the Arts where AAC commissioned a new work by Berkey for the tour. Truly a highlight for any choir!
Professionally, she is active with National Society of Arts and Letters, AZACDA, and Chorus America, as well as speaking at American Womens Pen Society in February, 2023. Recently, she was selected to be the Arts Hero in the December publication of “On Media” publication in the Valley. Choirs have taken her to China, Australia, Kenya, Eastern and Western Europe and competed in the International Eistefod Festival in Wales.
Carolyn enjoyed preparing the Beethoven Ninth Symphony for the Scottsdale Symphony with 90 volunteer singers and offered Beethoven Chorale Fantasy with members of the Phoenix Symphony members at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in 2021.
After 52 years of directing, fundraising, managing venues, programs, grant writing and teaching singers, she is enjoying her final year as conductor of Carolyn Eynon Singers where she dearly loves her singers and audiences and she lives by the motto; “Singing Together Connects People.”
She thanks her husband, 3 daughters, and sons in law, and 2 grandchildren for their love, patience and support throughout this musical journey.
