Music Leadership
Rusty McKinney, Music Director Since 2003,
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has been the Music Director at First Presbyterian Church, Salt Lake City. Under his leadership, annual concerts and special choral services have been reintroduced and repertoire has expanded to include classic sacred works from several centuries as well as new sacred pieces of worth from a variety of styles. The Chancel Choir of FPC has almost tripled in size, now numbering around 36 regular members and its annual spring and Christmas Concerts, which often have the choir collaborating with ensembles drawn from the Utah Symphony Orchestra, have become especially popular. Rusty also serves as Managing Director for First Presbyterian Church's Community Concert Series which he founded in 2004. This series showcases some of Utah’s finest talent as well as hosting nationally recognized ensembles such as the Concordia College Choir with Rene Clausen, Music Director; Tim Zimmerman and the King’s Brass; and the Houston based Celtic Band, Clandestine.
Rusty has long been interested and involved in sacred choral music. His first significant experiences came as a youth participating in the music program of Muir's Chapel United Methodist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He sang in choirs, and acted in musicals ("You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" and "Godspell"), and conducted the Chancel Choir in special programs at MCUMC, as well as playing the trombone and other instruments for services and special programs during his teenage years. Perhaps the most significant early experience was preparing and conducting the Muir's Chapel Chancel Choir and wind ensemble in a performance of Bruckner's "Second Mass in E Minor" in 1980 when he was a senior in high school. After volunteering in church music programs all over the country as he moved to pursue his orchestral career, Rusty accepted a position with the Mount Tabor Lutheran Church in Salt Lake City as Music Director in 1998. During the first two years of his five year tenure, the size of the choir more than doubled and he expanded the repertoire of the music program to include music from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. He also served as Praise Band Leader during the summer seasons at Mount Tabor.
Rusty moved to Utah to be the Bass Trombonist of the Utah Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1989. Prior to this, he was Bass Trombonist of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra during the 1988-89 season as a sabbatical replacement, participating in all activities including recordings with the Grammy Award winning orchestra. Before that, he was a member of the core orchestra of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera Association. He has served as a substitute musician with the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., and the Kennedy Center Orchestra of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He also spent four seasons on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina.
From 1995-2005, Rusty built and maintained a successful trombone studio at the University of Utah as an adjunct faculty member. During his tenure at the University of Utah, he founded UUTE (Utah's Ultimate Trombone Ensemble). UUTE now makes FPC its rehearsal and performance home and presents a very popular Christmas Concert at the church as well as other programs during the year. In 2005, Rusty was appointed Director of Low Brass Studies at the Horne School of Music at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. His duties include teaching all low brass music majors private lessons, as well as conducting the trombone choir, and coordinating low brass studies. He is a member of the artist faculty at the Horne School’s summer festival “Manhattan to the Mountains” which combines faculty from New York’s Manhattan School of Music with Utah artists as teachers and performers in an intensive two week chamber music program for high school and college students. He is also Assistant Lecturer of Bass Trombone at Brigham Young University and most recently, was appointed Music Director and Conductor of Westminster College Chamber Orchestra in Salt Lake City.
Rusty is a clinician for Edwards Instruments . He makes regular appearances as a soloist and guest artist locally and nationally. He appeared with UUTE in concert, both as conductor and soloist, to great acclaim at the 2008 International Trombone Festival hosted at the University of Utah. Other appearances include master classes and recitals at Brigham Young University-Idaho, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Idaho State University– Pocatello, and Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Rusty was a featured soloist at the 19th Annual UNLV 76+4 Trombones in 2003. He has many arrangements for trombone ensemble to his credit and some of these are published by Cherry Classics. (www.cherry-classics.com)
Rusty attended the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore receiving Peabody's Gustav Klemm Award for exemplary work in his chosen field of study, Trombone Performance. He was also a Bellinger Orchestra Scholarship recipient for the Chautauqua Institute in New York State in 1983.
Rusty was born in Greensboro, North Carolina and graduated with honors from the Walter Hines Page High School in 1980. He has been married to his High School sweetheart, Linda (nee Sutton) for more than 25 years and they reside in the Avenues. They have three teenaged children and four cats.
* * * * * * * Larry Blackburn, Organist Larry Blackburn is organist at First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, accompanist for the Wasatch Chorale in Utah Valley and recording studio pianist/accompanist. Larry has a Masters degree in organ performance from Brigham Young University, and a Bachelors degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Mr. Blackburn is a staff accompanist at BYU, performs and teaches at the annual BYU Organ Workshop and recently served as an adjunct professor in the Theater and Film department at Utah Valley State College. Mr. Blackburn has performed with the Utah Symphony and performs regularly on the historic Tabernacle and Conference Center organs on Temple Square as a guest organist. Larry comes to Utah after serving the Minnesota Bach Society and an Episcopal parishes in St. Paul, Minnesota and, previously, in Santa Barbara, California where he also taught at Westmont College. Larry has performed in Canada, England, Poland, Estonia, and Russia. Larry and his wife Erna have two children.
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