Johann J. Van Niekerk
Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Ensembles and Voice
Chair of Music Program
Offices & Programs
Education
MM: Choral Conducting, Temple University
DMA: Choral Conducting, University of Washington
BIOGRAPHY
Johann van Niekerk is an associate professor of music at Centre College and serves as the chair of the music program and director of the choral and voice programs. He joined Centre in 2015. A native of South Africa, he completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in piano performance at the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa (UNISA) respectively, and completed an M.M. in Choral Conducting at Temple University, Philadelphia, and DMA in choral conducting at the University of Washington, Seattle.
His teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of the socio-political with music and culture, and he has taught courses at Centre College in Afrofuturism in the Arts, Black Music and Social Resistance, Foundations and World Views of Music, Hip Hop, and has taught directed studies in Conducting, Applied Choral Methods, Classical Women Composers and Songwriters and Songwriting/Recording Projects. He has led the college’s study-abroad programs to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (2018), South Africa (2020), and Ghana (2023).
He has served as Choral Scholar at Christchurch Cathedral, Philadelphia, as music director of Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church, Seattle, and currently as Music Director of Trinity Episcopal Church in Danville, KY. He is also the Multicultural Music chair for the Kentucky chapter of the American Choral Directors’ Association (KYACDA). Since 2017, he has been a regular collaborative pianist on the staff of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts. In 2018 he led the “200 Strong” project in which 200 musicians gathered on stage in Newlin Hall to celebrate the college’s bicentennial.
He has presented on various topics at regional, national, and international meetings of the American Choral Directors’ Association (ACDA), Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), Baltic Studies Summer Institute (BALSSI), Central States Anthropological Society (CSAS), College Music Society (CMS), Russian, East-European and Central Asian-Studies (REECAS), and the Semiotics Society of America (SSA). His current research focuses on the creative output of the Lithuanian composer and painter Mikolajus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and poet-playwright-activist Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė.