Henry Leck

Founder and Conductor Laureate -Indianapolis Children’s Choir
Professor Emeritus – Choral Music – Butler University
Distinguished Music Advisor – KI Concerts
Artistic Director – MFA National Choir Festival

An internationally recognized choral director, Henry Leck is a professor emeritus in choral music at Butler University, where he served on the faculty for 27 years. He is the Founder and Conductor Laureate of the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, which he served as Artistic Director for 30 years. Under his leadership. the organization grew to and continues to be one of the largest and most respected children’s choir programs in the world. The touring choirs of the Indianapolis Children’s Choir have performed regularly for national ACDA, MENC, OAKE and AOSA Conferences. Additionally, the ICC tours internationally every year and has sung throughout the world. Mr. Leck recently arranged and conducted the national anthem for Kelly Clarkson and the Indianapolis Children’s Choir at the Super Bowl XLVI.

In the state of Indiana, Mr. Leck is the founding conductor of the Indiana Children’s Allstate Honor Choir. He also founded and conducted the Indiana Middle School Honor Choir. He conducted each ensemble for three years and returned to conduct the children’s honor choir this year for a fourth time. Mr. Leck has conducted Mixed, Men’s, Women’s, Junior High and Children’s All-State choirs and festival choirs in nearly every state. He is a frequent conductor of regional and national honor choirs, including the ACDA Southern, Southwest, North Central, Central, Western and Northwest Honors Choirs. In the spring of 2003, he conducted the ACDA National Junior High/Middle School Honor Choir in New York City and in 2011, the ACDA National Children’s Honor Choir in Chicago. On three occasions he has conducted National Honor Choirs for OAKE. In 2011 Mr. Leck conducted the premiere performance of a seven movement oratorio entitled “Melancholy Beauty” written by Bulgarian composer Georgi Andreev in Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center with adult choruses, children’s choir (ICC), Bulgarian women’s choir, Bulgarian folk instruments and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. For twenty-two years, he has conducted National Youth Choral Festivals in Carnegie Hall annually. In 2016. Mr. Leck has just been named Artistic Director of the Music for All National Choir Festival. Mr. Leck has conducted many international festivals including the Musica Mundi Tuscany Children’s Choir Festival in Italy, the Central European International Children’s Choral Festival, the Pacific Rim Festival, the International Children’s Choir Festival in Beijing, China, the Vienna Children’s & Boys Choir Festival with the Vienna Sangerknaben and the Festival Internacional de Coro de Ninos en Mexico. He is a regular festival conductor for KI Concerts having done festivals in Spain, Austria, and Italy and has recently been named their “Distinguished Music Advisor”. He has conducted many times in Brazil, including the Curso Internacional de Regencia Coral in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil where he founded the ARCI Sao Paulo Children’s Honor Choir that he conducts every other year. He recently conducted the Tokyo International High School Honor Choir in Japan. For more than twenty years he has conducted a festival annually with David Flood at Canterbury Cathedral. He also has served as the U.S. Jurist for the 1st Xinghai Prize International Choir Championships and as an international lecturer for the International Symposium on children and youth choral music in Guangzhou, China. In the summer of 2013 he was the US jurist in Malta, and in 2015 was a jurist at the Musica Sacra a Roma. In the summer of 2014, he was a jurist at the World Choir Games in Riga, Latvia.

Mr. Leck has received many honors including the Sagamore of the Wabash and the State of Indiana Distinguished Hoosier Award. He and the choir received the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award, which is the highest honor one can receive in the arts in Indiana. Recently Mr. Leck was named a recipient of the “Lowell Mason Fellows Award” which is the highest award given, by the National Association for Music education. He is also a Paul Harris fellow and named Outstanding Hoosier Musician in 2016 by IMEA.

Mr. Leck is widely known as a specialist in choral techniques, the child’s voice, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Laban and the boy’s changing voice. He has produced four teaching videos titled Vocal Techniques for the Young Singer, The Boy’s Expanding Voice: Take the High Road, Creating Artistry through Movement, Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Creating Artistry with the Male Maturing Voice. He was a lead author for the choral textbook series published by McGraw Hill/Glencoe titled Experiencing Choral Music and is the lead author of a new series of textbooks entitled Voices in Concert. He is also the editor of two nationally known choral series published by Hal Leonard Corporation and Colla Voce, Inc. Each year he has taught an international conductor’s workshop entitled Creating Artistry at Butler University. He has recently written a textbook titled, Creating Artistry through Choral Excellence. Mr. Leck received his training from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, the University of Colorado and Indiana University.