Norman Scribner to Retire

Norman Scribner has been one of Washington’s foremost music makers since graduating with honors in 1961 from Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. While pursuing positions at Washington National Cathedral, as keyboardist for the National Symphony Orchestra and teaching at local universities, he founded the Choral Arts Society of Washington in 1965.

Five years later, the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971 cemented his place in musical history. The commissioned work he conducted, Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” earned Scribner and the composer a co-nomination for a Grammy Award. In 1996, one of the CAS’s 16 recordings, John Corigliano’s “Of Rage and Remembrance” with the Oratorio Society and Leonard Slatkin conducting the NSO, received a Grammy Award for Best Classical Recording.

After 45 years of fervent praise and local honors for his imaginative programming, Scribner is retiring come August. His programming for this season reflects upon the past and looks forward to the future of music in the millennium.

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