Home Sweet Home: Spring 2026

Joseph Kemper at St. Olaf: Coming home for good

by Elisabeth Cherland

Joseph Kemper is finishing his first year of teaching at his Alma Mater – St. Olaf College. He conducts the Viking Chorus and Chapel Choir, teaches Music and Social Justice, Choral Conducting, and Choral Literature, and also directs the Cantati Singers and Treble Singers with the Angelica Cantati Youth Choirs in the Twin Cities. When we spoke in January he reflected on teaching at home, changes in students and himself since he graduated, and the joys and challenges of beginning again.  

E.C. Give us a sense of your professional journey. How did you get started and how did you come to be teaching at home?  

J.K.: I grew up in Oregon and my older brother was a singer. He took part in the Youth Choral Academy (now called the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy) at the Oregon Bach Festival which Anton Armstrong directed. I was a band kid in middle school, but because of my brother I converted to choir and participated in the Academy all four years of high school. I was so inspired by Anton, and by Chris Aspaas, who was the assistant director of the group and had just started teaching at St. Olaf. Because of them I knew early on that I wanted to study at St. Olaf, I wanted to go into music, and I wanted to be a choir director.  The Youth Choral Academy is still a great recruiting pipeline that brings passionate students to St. Olaf. This fall there were six singers from across the country in the Viking Chorus (the first-year tenor/bass choir at St. Olaf) who all sang in the Academy. 

I knew I wanted to teach high school. When I graduated from St. Olaf I applied for strong high school choral programs around the country. I ended up landing at Winter Park High School in Winter Park, Florida, and had an incredible experience there. I loved teaching high school. I worked with mixed choirs and treble choirs and learned a ton. After five years there, I got my master’s degree in choral conducting at Yale, then moved across the country again to the University of Michigan for my doctorate. After that I taught for two years in a visiting position at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington and then had two amazing years at Concordia College in Moorhead. When the position at St. Olaf came open, I was very excited and had to apply. I was fortunate enough to get an interview and was then offered the position. I’m now in my second semester teaching here. 

EC:: What did you enjoy about your time at St. Olaf as a student? 

J.K.: It was a magical four years and there were so many things I loved. The choir was a very important part of my experience. I enjoyed every second of rehearsal with Chris Aspaas in my first year with the Viking Chorus, and then with Anton for three years in the St. Olaf Choir. I loved the people, the community, the musical excellence, the rigor of the academics, the experience of touring, the Christmas festival…the list goes on. There were so many parts that were formative in who I am today. I wasn’t always the best student because I was still learning who I was at that time, but I think back to those four years with deep fondness.  

E.C.: When you were a student, did you envision yourself returning to St. Olaf to teach? 

J.K.: If you’re a vocal music education student at St. Olaf College, it’s hard not to imagine and be like, “Wow, wouldn’t that be cool?” Those of us who wanted to teach at the college level someday definitely dreamed about it. But you learn later in your career that what you want and what’s available don’t often align. At a place like St. Olaf, people go to live out their careers. No director of the St. Olaf Choir has ever left. And I plan to be here for good.   

E.C.: What has surprised you initially upon returning and teaching at St. Olaf? 

J.K.: I’m not sure I’ve been too surprised by too much. I’ve started a new position every two years and have found that the hardest part of any new job is adapting to the logistics and the culture. How do you submit purchase orders; what are the deadlines for various things; who do I talk for this information; how do I do reimbursements; is this a Canvas school or a Moodle school, etc. I’m looking forward to being here for a while and feeling settled in all the logistics. St. Olaf has a great infrastructure for supporting its ensembles and is a well-oiled and well-supported machine. And, there’s still a lot to navigate and adapt to.  

E.C.: What has changed at St. Olaf since you were a student? 

J.K.: Students are socially aware and engaged in ways that they weren’t when I was a student. It’s invigorating to be around and I love the environment. In some places when you program diverse music the students respond by saying, “we shouldn’t do that,” or “oh, that’s problematic.” At St. Olaf, especially in the upperclassmen choirs, as we’ve programmed music and had conversations, they’ve been earnest with me and said, “I’m so glad we’re doing this piece of music. Here are some ideas we have for how we can engage with it in a thoughtful, respectful way.” They don’t say we shouldn’t do the music or put up barriers. They’re committed to thoughtful engagement.  

E.C. Can you give us an example of a piece that you’ve worked on where they’ve shown this engagement? 

J.K.: We did two pieces this past fall that are good examples. The first is Did You Know? by Shruti Rajasekhar. Shruti is based in the Twin Cities and her background is a mixture of Indian classical as well as Western classical music. This piece is a response to a father and daughter who died crossing into the United States from Mexico in the Rio Grande. The piece asks us to consider, “Did you know about this suffering?” The second piece is Lao Rahal Soti, arranged by Shireen Abu-Khader. With this piece one of the students said, “Hey, there’s a student on campus who doesn’t sing in choir, but she’s Palestinian Jordanian, and she would be interested in coming in to talk with us about the piece, and helping us with the Arabic translation.” I was so grateful. The student could have said, “I don’t think we should do this.” Instead, they connected us with student in our community who is a cultural insider, both in language and in lived experience. We enjoyed developing a relationship with her, having a lot of conversations as a community, giving opportunities for students to speak about their connections with the pieces. 
So, we had these two pieces that really engaged with current issues of geopolitical harm. The concert was called Heal Our Land, and it explored a wide range of topics. Anytime you’re doing a piece that’s touching on communities that overlap with our students, and touch areas of social challenge or geopolitical harm, it requires more conversation. 

E.C. What challenges have you faced in returning to teach at home? 

J.K.: A challenge you’d expect is that people will still view you as a student. If I’d gotten this job 10 years ago, I think that would have been a bigger challenge. At this point there’s only a handful of professors who were here when I was a student. I think the best way to establish myself as a non-student is just to do good work. 

One challenge is engaging with the capital “T” Tradition. People have ideas about the Lutheran choral tradition, what it should sound like, and the sort of repertoire it’s supposed to do. I think some of that is good, and some is not helpful, it’s narrowing. In the 15 years since I graduated, I’ve changed so much. In the interview process I tried to convey that, yes, I’m an “Ole” and I love St. Olaf. And, over the course of my career I’ve developed philosophies, some of which align with the tradition here and some that challenge it. I’m not interested in doing exactly what’s always been done. I’ve developed what I think is important in my music making, and my goal is to share that, to learn, and to grow. So, while navigating that is a challenge to some degree, I have felt very supported and encouraged to try things that are different in my work here. 

For example, the Chapel Choir has historically done a Vespers concert in the first semester and an oratorio with the St. Olaf Orchestra in the second semester. The model that worked well this year, and we’ll do again, is that in the fall we have a concert of collage-style programming. There are some choral pieces, solo pieces, some readings, intentional lighting, and this was very well received by the students as well as the community. That doesn’t necessarily break a whole ton of tradition, but it engages freely with a wide range of music.  

When I was a student, for the oratorio in the spring we did pillars of Western European classical music. We did Elijah, the Brahms Requiem, etc. When I look through the library of oratorios they’re mostly by white, male, Western European classical composers. That’s great music, and I certainly will do some of those pillars during my career. But I also believe we need to do works outside of that bubble. This year, we’re doing two works. We’re doing Undine Smith’s Moore’s Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, a 40 (ish)-minute oratorio, about the life and legacy of Martin Luther King. It’s for orchestra, soloists, and narrator, and it’s powerful. We’re also doing Nathaniel Detz’s Chariot Jubilee with choir and organ, and tenor solo. It’s a big sing, but there’s a great student tenor we happen to have in Chapel Choir. The challenge with diversifying any core library is always cost. I’m grateful that at St. Olaf there are funds for interdisciplinary work, so I applied for and was given funds to purchase these new scores. Without those funds the cost of these scores would have wiped out my entire choral budget. Having these resources on campus is a game changer, because it means that the library is able to expand. These are newer choral-orchestral works are incredible pieces of music that deserve a place in the canon. It’s exciting. 

E.C.: Do you have any advice for any other teachers who are coming home to teach at their alma mater? 

J.K.: Trust who you are. Your primary goal shouldn’t be to recreate what you experienced. Uphold the things that you know are important, that were valuable to you as a student and be willing to change or let go of the things that weren’t. And don’t try to change too many things too soon. I always recommend pre-service music educators change as little as possible in their first year, because just by nature of who they are, how they rehearse, and the music they pick, that’s generally a big enough change for the program. It takes time to develop social capital in a new program and for those involved to understand the value you can provide.  

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About the Author

Dr. Elisabeth Cherland (she/her) is a fourth-generation choral conductor as well as teacher, singer, song leader, violinist, and Lutheran church musician. As Assistant Professor and Director of Choral Activities at Minnesota State University, Mankato she teaches music education courses, private voice, and conducts the Concert Choir and Chamber Singers. She also serves as Artistic Director of Musicorum, a Mankato-based chamber choir. Prior to her appointment at MSU she taught at Gustavus Adolphus College and spent seven years teaching middle and high school music in the public schools of South Dakota. Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, she lives in St. Peter, MN with her partner Kent and their two sons, Elijah and Leif. She loves storytelling and story-hearing, doughnuts, bubble tea, laughing, knitting, and sunshine when it’s available.