Stanley Roberts – Conductor

A champion of choral and sacred music, Stanley Roberts is in his fifteenth year as Director of Choral Studies and Sacred Music Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Under his leadership, the auditioned, forty-five-voice Mercer Singers has been a featured choir for the Georgia Music Educators Association, made their Spivey Hall debut in Atlanta, performed with the Macon Symphony Orchestra, made two compact disc recordings, premiered six works at the 2002 Southern Composers Forum, and completed highly successful performance tours of England and Wales in 2000, Italy in 2002 culminating in a concert at the Vatican in Rome, the Czech Republic and Austria in 2004, Poland in 2006, and Japan in 2007.  The will tour Russia in 2011.

Increasingly in demand nationally as a choral workshop clinician and adjudicator, Roberts conducts choirs throughout the United States and abroad and collaborates with regional orchestras.  Roberts’ direction of the combined forces of the Macon Symphony Orchestra, the Mercer Singers and the University Choir received great praise:  “It was one of those rare performances that every musician hopes for — about as close to perfection as is humanly possible…he (Roberts) was very much in command of his forces and seemed to have a very clear conception of this piece and how to get it from the forces at his command. The long, sweeping crescendos leading up to a crashing climax were thrilling.”

Dr. Roberts is a past president of the Georgia American Choral Directors’ Association and is the All-College Chorus Chair for Georgia Music Educators Association. A graduate of Mercer University, Dr. Roberts also holds the Master of Church Music and Doctor of Music Arts in Conducting degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. While at Southern Seminary, he was a Garrett Fellow and studied conducting with Dr. John Dickson.  Dr. Roberts is the also founder of JUBULATE!, an annual mass-choir experience for church youth choirs in the Southeast United States and is Minister of Music at the First Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia.  Dr. Roberts was selected as the chorale director for Oxbridge, the 2008 Choral Institute of the C.S. Lewis Foundation in Oxford and Cambridge, England.  He is Editor of the new hymnal, “Celebrating Grace – Hymnal for Baptist Worship,” that was released in 2010.