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Allen Cantey Crowell

(1937-2025)

Allen C. Crowell died on March 29, 2025, at ing and conduct the Oratorio Choir at Westminster
the age of eighty-seven after a valiant battle with Choir College. After twenty years at Westminster, he
pancreatic cancer. From a young age, Allen sang served for ten years as the Heyward Chair of Choral
in church, and as a teenager began taking voice Music and Director of Choral Activities at the Uni-
lessons with the music minister at Dauphin Way versity of Georgia Department of Music.
Methodist. While in college at Westminster, he sang During his fifty-year career as a conductor, Allen
with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall led all-state bands and choruses, honors groups, and
with Leonard Bernstein, Bruno Walter, Herbert von other festivals across the country, and he conducted
Karajan, and John Barbirolli. In 1960 he married the highly acclaimed ACDA National Men’s Honor
his high school sweetheart, Phyllis Merry. In 1962 he Choir at their national conference in Washington
took the helm of the Army Chorus and became the D.C. in 1995. From 1998 to 2003 he was the music
associate bandmaster of The Army Band. During director of the Ghost Ranch Vocal Camp in New
his years in Washington, Allen also performed reg- Mexico. He received an honorary doctorate from
ularly as a soloist with the Baltimore Symphony in Westminster Choir College in 2006 and was named
a series of pop concerts, served as the bass soloist Conductor Emeritus of The United States Army
at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, Band in 2017.
D.C. for seventeen years, and was bass soloist with He was a brilliant musician, witty, funny, a vo-
The York Symphony in Pennsylvania. racious reader, practical and passionate, stoic in his
After serving twenty years in the Army, regularly approach to daily life and world events, fiery and
performing at The White House and State Dinners, intense with a baton in his hand. His absence is pal-
Allen retired at the age of forty-two and returned pable, and he will be sorely missed by all who loved
to Princeton, New Jersey, to teach choral conduct- and knew him.

CHORAL JOURNAL June/July 2025 Volume 65 Number 9 55