Emerson Eads | Music and Theater | SIU

Dr. Emerson Eads begins his first year as Director of Choral Studies at Southern Illinois University in Fall 2025. An American composer and conductor, Eads is known for his expressive works centered on themes of social justice.

A signature work, Mass for the Oppressed—which received Honorable Mention in the finalists of the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music (2021)—was composed to raise awareness for the Fairbanks Four, four Indigenous men from his hometown in Alaska wrongfully imprisoned for eighteen years. His cantata …from which your laughter rises, highlights the impact of mass incarceration on families and was performed alongside Haydn’s Stabat Mater to critical acclaim.

Eads’ opera The Princess Sophia, commemorating the centennial of the SS Princess Sophia shipwreck, premiered with Juneau Lyric Opera to glowing reviews in Opera magazine. His recent A Prairie Cantata revives the poetry of a forgotten North Dakota woman writer, Huldah Lucile Winsted, and was premiered by the Minot State University Choir, where Eads previously served as Director of Choral Activities. He also wrote the Alma Mater for Minot State University.

Among other honors, Eads was awarded third place in The American Prize for Composition in Vocal Chamber Music for his song cycle The Gleaners, a setting of Patrick Milian’s poetry celebrating the queer love story of the biblical Ruth and Naomi. His music is published by Earthsongs, Alry Publications, and North Star Music.

He earned his doctorate in choral conducting from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under Carmen-Helena Téllez and worked with renowned conductors such as Joseph Flummerfelt, Stephen Cleobury, Anne Howard Jones, and Peter Phillips. Before graduate school, Eads studied composition with the Pulitzer Prize–winning Alaskan composer John Luther Adams.