Mark Doerries

Head of Graduate Choral Conducting Studio
Associate Professor of the Practice in Conducting, Artistic Director of the Notre Dame Children's Choir

Disciplines: Conducting

Professional Biography

Dr. Mark Doerries is the Head of the Graduate Conducting Studio and an Associate Professor in the Practice of Conducting for Sacred Music at Notre Dame. Doerries serves as the Artistic Director of the Notre Dame Children's Choir, Children’s Organ Training Program, and the Sacred Music Academy, the community engagement arm of Sacred Music at Notre Dame.

Doerries’ recent conducting engagements include appearances with the Girls’ Choir Festival of the Diocese of Leeds, UK, the Diocese of Cleveland Children’s Choir Festival, Bishop Reicher Choral Festival of Waco, Tx, and performances with the Jessica Lang Dance Company, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, the Organ Historical Society, Indiana Music Educators’ Association annual conference, National Pastoral Musicians’ Association Conference, Circle the State with Song Indiana, the College of New Jersey Chamber Singers, and Ampleforth College Choir, and at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, TX. Doerries has led students and ensembles on tours through major cathedrals in the United States as well as in Leeds, Liverpool, London, and York, UK.

With the Notre Dame Children's Choir, Doerries recorded five albums: O Emmanuel, released in the fall of 2016, debuted at #1 on Billboard's Chart of Traditional Classical Music; O Day of Peace, released in the spring of 2017, a collection of hymn arrangements; Arturo Sandoval’s Christmas at Notre Dame (conductor and producer) is a collaboration with 10-time GRAMMY winner and jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval; Magnificat: Evening Prayer with the Notre Dame Children’s Choir, a collection of commissioned Vespers and Evensong liturgies, and A Ceremony of Carols for Christmas 2021.

Doerries has commissioned and premiered over 30 works by composers such as Caroline Shaw, Phillip Moore, Mark Miller, J.J. Wright, Stephen Mager, John Duggan, Ruth Boshkoff, Evelyne Currenton-Simpson, and Daniel Justin. He is the founding editor of the Notre Dame Children's Choir Choral Series, published by MorningStar Music Publishers/ ECS Publishing Group, and appears on the Universal Music Group, Arsis Records, and Dynamic Catholic recording labels.

Doerries is the co-recipient of a $1.6 million Lilly Endowment Grant for sacred music and a $500,000 Presidential Circle Award that supports the Sacred Music Academy, Notre Dame Children’s Choir, children’s Organ Training Program, and graduate studies in Sacred Music at Notre Dame. He was recognized by the Chamber of Commerce of the City of South Bend for his work at the University and in the community with the Notre Dame Children’s Choir and inducted into the 2019 class of 40 Under 40 leaders in the region.

Past presentations include engagements with the American Choral Directors Association National Conference in Dallas, National Pastoral Musicians Association, the Modern Language Association, Festival 500 Choral Symposium, and a TEDx Talk in 2015 titled, "What If Children Were More Than Cute?". Doerries’ research on chemosynthetic deep-sea ecosystems is published in the journals Deep-Sea Research and Marine Ecology.

Doerries founded the Luminescence Project in 2004 for the composition and performance of multi-sensory music. The Luminescence Project performed in the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival and the Bloomington Arts Festival with additional installations mounted in New York City, Vancouver, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Original productions include staged performances of PASSIONATE CONVICTIONS, an electrified rock oratorio based on JS Bach's St. John Passion, and Dreaming in Darkness, a vocal music and light-art production.

Doerries previously served as the Director of Choral and Vocal Music at Olney Central College and as Music Director of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis before his appointment to the University of Notre Dame.

Representative Publications, Performances, and Creative Work

• A Ceremony of Carols (2020), Sacred Music Academy Records 
• Magnificat: Evening Prayer with the Notre Dame Children’s Choir (2019), Arsis Records
• Arturo Sandoval’s Christmas at Notre Dame (2018), Universal Music Group
• O Day of Peace (2017), Sacred Music Academy Records
• O Emmanuel (2016), Dynamic Catholic Records
• Notre Dame Children's Choir Choral Series (Editor), MorningStar Music/ESC Publishing