Music instructor to conduct honor choirs

Corky Koerselman, instructor in music and director of alumni and parent relations at Northwestern College, will direct three honor choirs in November.

On Nov. 6, Koerselman will direct the Iowa Choral Director’s Association–North Central District Honor Choir Festival in Mason City. Four choirs will perform: the seventh and eighth grade bass clef chorus, the seventh and eighth grade treble clef chorus, the high school honor choir and the festival choir. The concert will end with the singers and audience joining in Wilhousky’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Koerselman will be in Estherville, Iowa, on Nov. 9 to serve as conductor of the Heartland Honor Choir. Singers from Estherville Lincoln Central, Graettinger-Terril-Ruthven-Ayrshire, West Bend-Mallard, Clay Central-Everly, West Lyon, Newell-Fonda, South O’Brien and Pocahontas will be part of the mass choir of more than 160 singers.

Koerselman will direct the seventh and eighth grade bass clef choir at the Opus Honor Choir Festival held in the C.Y. Stephens Auditorium in Ames on Nov. 16. Singers will be among 720 musicians from grades five through nine who were selected following a recorded audition process. The festival is hosted by the Iowa Choral Directors Association.

A Northwestern College graduate, Koerselman earned a master’s degree in education from Northwest Missouri State University. He has more than 35 years of music teaching experience, most recently as the vocal director at Sibley-Ocheyedan High School, where his vocal jazz group was selected as Class 2A state champion in 2011.

Koerselman is active as a church musician, guest soloist, clinician and adjudicator. From 2011 to 2014 he chaired the high school repertoire and standards committee for the Iowa Choral Directors Association.