Faculty

Royzell L. Dillard, M.A.

Performing Artist, Conductor, Assistant Professor

Celebrating his fifteenth year of service as the Conductor and Artistic Director of the internationally acclaimed Hampton University Choirs, the demand for the choirs as well as its conductor is tremendous. Whether performing as a solo artist, as a clinician, or as the conductor of one of the Hampton Choirs audiences are pleased with the outpouring of synergy, charisma, and musical integrity that Dillard engages.

Royzell Dillard has had the opportunity to study with some of the most prominent teachers of music in this country. He has studied conducting under maestros Jerry Mueller, Dale Warland, John Rivers, Roland Carter, JoAnn Richardson, Effie Gardner, Don Lee White, and Willis Barnett. He has prepared the choir for maestros Julius Williams, Wes Kinney and Nathan Carter. Royzell has studied voice or coached with Samuel Robeson, Margaret Hawshaw, Jane White, Sharon Chrisman, Roland Carter, Marilyn Thompson, Lorraine Bell, Willis Patterson and Carl Haywood.

Royzell Dillard has several noteworthy performing credits including operatic roles in THE TELEPHONE, LOST IN THE STARS, PORGY AND BESS and in the music drama HIRAM AND NETTIE; A LOVE STORY BETWEEN TWO SLAVES. He has performed baritone/bass solos in MESSIAH, SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A MARTYR, THE SEVEN LAST WORDS, ELIJAH, BALLAD OF THE BROWN KING and REQUIEM. Royzell has also performed musical theater recreating the role of Ken in A'INT MISBEHAVIN', Hiram in BROOMSTICKS AND ORANGE BLOSSOMS, and as Big Moe in FIVE GUYS NAME MOE.

Under his leadership as Director of Choirs at Hampton University, Royzell’s conducting credits include performances for Presidents’ Bush and Clinton, Yolanda Adams, Mervyn Warren, the United States Marine Band and the Virginia Symphony. The choir’s most recent accomplishments were command performances in Ontario, Canada during the fall of 2001 and a performance at the Paris Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2002.

Royzell Dillard has led various workshops during the Hampton University Ministers' Conference. He has held the post of Music Director for the Christian Education Leadership Institute at Hampton University, has been a guest lecturer/presenter at the Black Music Caucus Conference, the Inter-Collegiate Music Association Conference, the Dallas Cultural Arts Center, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Haile Selassie I Peace Foundation Concert series. Currently, he serves as the Co-Director of Music for the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference Choir Directors’ Organists’ Guild. He has article entitled “Forging the New Musical Flame” in the spring 2002 volume of The African American Pulpit.

At Hampton, Royzell continually instructs courses in General Music, Voice, African-American Music and Conducting. He is the Minister of Music at Memorial Church at Hampton University and conducts all choirs at Hampton to include HIS CHOSEN SOUNDS: The Gospel Choir, The University Choir, Men's and Women's Choruses. He holds membership in the Inter-Collegiate Music Association, The National Association for the Preservation of African-American Music, The American Choral Directors Association, National Association of Teachers of Voice, The Gospel Music Workshop of America, Who's Who in America, America's Most Outstanding Young People and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

With a belief that all music should be experienced rather than just listened to or just performed, Royzell Dillard seeks to treat each musical experience with subtle delicacies, striking tonal images and technical devices that will allow for an ethereal musical moment. In doing so, that experience can never be replicated but only indulged at the time of its hearing. Dillard often says to his students, “I do not believe that composers really intended for their music to be JUST performed; rather I think they would have desired that the music come alive and touch the soul of each listener in a unique and individualized way.” It is in this vein that Royzell Dillard seeks to keep his presentations filled with intelligence, integrity, and innovative yet beautiful elements that keep each presentation interesting for future generations.