Great Hall Choral Arts Festival | Supporting, Singing, Serving

We invite you to join us for the eighth annual Great Hall Choral Arts Festival in Benson Great Hall on Tuesday, October 26. Our guest clinician this year will be composer and conductor B.E. Boykin, joining us just months away from the world premiere of her new opera, My Name is Florence, by MN Opera. Designed for area high school choirs, our event runs from noon to 9 p.m. and includes choral clinics presented by Dr. Merrin Guice Gill, a college major fair, games, dinner, and an evening concert. Our concluding Festival Concert will afford each choir opportunity to perform individually as well as combined with all participating choirs on one of B.E. Boykin's works.

To register, please contact Kevin Shull at kevin-shull@bethel.edu.

B.E. Boykin

B.E. (Brittney Elizabeth) Boykin is a native of Alexandria, Virginia, and comes from a musical family. At the age of 7, she began piano lessons and continued her studies through high school under the tutelage of Mrs. Alma Sanford. Mrs. Sanford guided her through various competitions, such as the NAACP’s ACT-SO competition where she garnered 1st place for 3 consecutive years in the local competition, as well as being awarded The Washington Post “Music and Dance Award” in the spring of 2007.

Boykin then pursued her classical piano studies at Spelman College under the leadership of Dr. Rachel Chung. After graduating Spelman College in 2011 with a B.A. in Music, Boykin continued her studies at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. During her time at Westminster, she was awarded the R and R Young Composition Prize just a few months shy of graduating with her M.M. in Sacred Music with a concentration in choral studies in May 2013.

Boykin’s choral piece “We Sing as One” was commissioned to celebrate Spelman College’s 133rd Anniversary of its founding at the 2014 Founders Day Convocation. She has also been featured as the conductor/composer-in-residence for the 2017 Harry T. Burleigh Commemorative Spiritual Festival at Tennessee State University. Boykin has been commissioned by and collaborated with several organizations, including a number of ACDA divisions, the Minnesota Opera, and the Kennedy Center. She obtained her Ph.D. from Georgia State University with an emphasis in Music Education and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the Georgia Institute of Technology.