Dr. Zebulon Highben

Director of Chapel Music
Music
Phone: 
919-684-6360
Email: 
zebulon.highben@duke.edu
Office: 
036 Westbook Building
Mailing Address: 

Box 90974
Durham, NC 27708

A conductor, composer, and scholar of sacred music, Dr. Zebulon Highben serves as director of Chapel Music at Duke University Chapel and associate professor of the practice of church music at Duke Divinity School. He conducts the Duke Chapel Choir and Schola Cantorum, edits the Music from Duke Chapel choral series, teaches courses in music and liturgy, and oversees Duke Chapel’s extensive music program, which connects students, community members, staff singers, instrumentalists, and professional colleagues in myriad worship services and sacred concerts.

Choirs under Dr. Highben’s direction have been featured at numerous conferences and festivals, and have toured domestically and internationally. He has served as a guest conductor, clinician, and lecturer across the United States, and represented the U.S. in the American Choral Directors Association’s 2016 International Conductors Exchange Program with South Korea. He is a past recipient of The Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting (College/University Division) from The American Prize.

As a composer, Dr. Highben is frequently commissioned by churches, schools, and arts organizations. More than seventy of his anthems, hymns, and liturgical works are published by eight major domestic publishing houses and by Gehrmans Musikförlag in Sweden. Compositional honors include awards from the American Composers Forum, the American Harp Society, The American Prize, the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, ASCAP, the Bach Choir, and the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. His published scholarship includes numerous articles and essays on sacred music, two choral anthologies (the Augsburg Motet Book and the Augsburg Chorale Book), and a Festschrift in honor of composer Ronald A. Nelson.

Dr. Highben studied at Ohio State University, Luther Seminary, and St. Olaf College, and holds the doctor of musical arts in conducting from the College of Music at Michigan State University. He is an ordained deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Explore Dr. Highben’s work at his website.