Kristofer Johnson
"When it comes to building relationships, I don’t know what tool is more powerful than communal singing.”
Even while conversing, Director of Choirs and Instructor of Music Kristofer Johnson gestures and inflects as though he is conducting. His joy in his job is just that irrepressible. Given that he works each year with hundreds of student and community singers, such ebullience is an asset.
Growing up in Pennsylvania, Johnson was steeped in music, taking up piano, string bass and singing as a child before becoming entranced with choral music in high school. Although other subjects appealed to him, music, he says, “was always ascendant.” In his senior year, Johnson was accepted into the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied singing with an eye to eventually conducting and teaching. He would later complete a master’s in choral conducting at the University of Illinois, which led to a career crossroads.
“I found myself deciding between starting a Ph.D. program or getting into professional choral conducting and singing work,” Johnson says. When he saw an ad for a conducting job at the Canterbury School in Connecticut, the fates seemed to be intervening, and a trajectory was set. From Canterbury, Johnson and his wife Janine, a pediatric occupational therapist, set off for Nashville, where he taught for two years at Vanderbilt University before heading back to the Northeast. He then taught at Proctor Academy in Andover, New Hampshire, for nine years before accepting a position as the director of choirs position at Exeter in 2013.
