Music at All Saints':

Dale Adelmann

Dale Adelmann was named Director of Music at All Saints’, Beverly Hills, in 2003 following the retirement of Thomas Foster, under whose leadership, for more than a quarter-century, the music ministry of the parish flourished and rose to national prominence in the Episcopal Church.

Dale Adelmann is a Past President of the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) and currently serves on the board of the Anglican Musicians Foundation. He has served both as editor and consulting editor of the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, and for several years represented AAM at meetings of the Colloquium of Episcopal Professional and Vocational Associations.

He is active as a guest conductor, and has conducted choral festivals in Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Birmingham, Greenwich, Hartford, New York City, St. Louis, Tucson, and Wilmington. His choral arrangements are published by Paraclete Press and by Trinitas (Oregon Catholic Press); his arrangements of Spirituals are featured on numerous compact discs, and “Swing low, sweet chariot” has been sung on national radio broadcasts of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion.

Prior to his appointment at All Saints’, Adelmann was Organist-Choirmaster of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Buffalo, New York, for a dozen years, where he conducted the Choir of Men & Boys and the Cathedral Girls’ Choir in 175 choral services and concerts annually; led six foreign tours, including choir residencies in many of the great cathedrals of England; and recorded three critically admired compact discs on the Pro Organo (Zarex) label. Under his leadership the Cathedral Girls’ Choir, in particular, drew international attention for the quality of its singing, and was privileged to be the only North American choir to sing a concert for the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion gathered in Canterbury for the 1998 Lambeth Conference.

He served as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and its Chamber Singers 2001-2003, preparing the Chorus for concerts under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, Julius Rudel, Robert Page, Ann Howard Jones, Arie Lipsky, Thomas Wilkins, and Marvin Hamlisch. In May 2003 he made his debut on the podium with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducting With Music Strong in the presence of its composer, Lukas Foss, and A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In 1987 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for the study of Anglican choral worship at the University of Cambridge, England, where he remained to complete a Ph.D in that subject. The book resulting from the fruit of his research was published in 1997, The Contribution of Cambridge Ecclesiologists to the Revival of Anglican Choral Worship, 1839-1862, quickly sold out, receiving enthusiastic reviews in both the scholarly and the international Church press:

“This is a well-researched monograph that should be read by all those interested in nineteenth-century church history and liturgy.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April 1999.

“Adelmann’s study is a valuable addition to the literature of both the ecclesiological movement and the Anglican choral revival. Both for the new information it provides and for its reexamination and reassessment of previously held views, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the intellectual background to the momentous changes in the practice of Anglican worship in England in the nineteenth century.” Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, March 1999.

“This is a comprehensive account from the pen of Adelmann, which should be read not only by students but those who want to get a feel of the period between 1839 and 1862.” Cathedral Music, 1999.

While at Cambridge he became the first North American to sing in the renowned Choir of St. John’s College, then under the direction of George Guest, and sang nearly 700 Evensongs and Choral Masses during his three years in the Choir. He also served as Musical Director of The Gentlemen of St. John’s, the semi-professional choral ensemble comprising the choral scholars of the St. John’s College Choir, conducting concert tours of Sweden, Northern Ireland, Wales, England, and the USA. Dr. Adelmann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University, respectively. In addition, he studied for a year at the University of Freiburg, Germany. 

Dale can be reached by email at the following address: dadelmann@allsaintsbh.org.