Craig Paré, Professor of Music, conducts the DePauw University Band and Symphonic Band. Appointed to the Institute of Music faculty in 1993, Dr. Paré has also taught conducting and courses in music education. Currently, he also teaches two courses for non-music majors: Thinking, Listening, Creating with Music and a First Year Seminar, Music in Film. Dr. Paré earned a Bachelor of Music in music education from Barrington College, a Master of Music in percussion performance from The Florida State University, where he was inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in wind conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a student of Eugene Migliaro Corporon. Dr. Paré’s scholarship and professional activities have extended to recording, as a frequent guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator around the United States, and as a professional timpanist and percussionist.
Under his direction, the DePauw University Band produced ten critically-acclaimed compact discs through its CD Recording Project, issued commercially on the Mark Masters label. The University Band has also recorded wind works for the Kjos Publishing Company and Daehn Publications. The ensemble has been host to world-renowned musicians including composers James Beckel, Lisa Bielawa, Susan Botti, John Corigliano, George Crumb, Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Augusta Read Thomas, Joseph Schwantner, Bright Sheng, Joan Tower, and Chen Ye, and conductors Eugene Migliaro Corporon, Rodney Dorsey, John Lynch, and Jack Stamp. His University Band student musicians have been selected for the Indiana Intercollegiate Honor Band to work with such eminent university conductors as H. Robert Reynolds, Jerry Junkin, Eric Wilson, Frank Wickes, and Kevin Sedatole.
Dr. Paré was also the co-founder of the Cincinnati Youth Wind Ensemble, a select wind group comprised of the finest high school woodwind, brass, and percussion students in the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky region. As a writer, he is a contributor to the Teaching Music through Performance in Band series of wind music texts, published by G.I.A. Publications. Sought after as a guest conductor and clinician of musical ensembles, Paré as worked with a wide variety of middle school, high school, and adult musical ensembles around the country. He has also been a guest adjudicator, including the Kentucky Music Educators Association, the Indiana State School Music Association, and for Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.
As a performer, Dr. Paré studied timpani and percussion with Roland Kohloff, Principal Timpanist of the New York Philharmonic, and Gary Werdesheim at Florida State University, and participated in master classes with Cloyd Duff, Stanley Leonard, and Richard Brown. He has performed as timpanist and percussionist with the Savannah, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville Symphony Orchestras, the Brooklyn Lyric Opera and Des Moines Metro Opera, and the Connecticut and Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestras. He served as Principal Timpanist and Percussionist with the Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, South Carolina, and the Festival Dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, Italy. He has performed and recorded with two renowned wind groups: the Cincinnati Wind Symphony, and the Philharmonia à vent, and is currently Principal Timpanist of the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra. He has also been a guest percussionist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and has recorded for Hal Leonard Publications. In addition, Paré is featured as timpani soloist on the DePauw University Band's fourth compact disc, Wind Journey, performing the Concertino for Timpani, Winds and Percussion by Donald. H. White, and was a guest soloist with the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra performing Michael Daugherty’s timpani concerto, Raise the Roof.
Dr. Paré’s teaching at DePauw has been recognized through the receipt of three preeminent awards: the John Price Durban John Distinguished Professorship, the DePauw University/United Methodist Church Exemplary Teaching Award, and the Joan Westmen Battey Distinguished Teaching Award. Paré has also been honored with election to the International Band Fraternity, Phi Beta Mu. Finally, as a student of Grand Master Stephen St. Pierre and Sensei Niki St. Pierre, he has earned the rank of Black Belt, Sandan 3rd Dan, Kenpo Gojo Ryu at the All-American Karate Academy, Greencastle, Indiana.