The Sun Lakes Chorale Has a New Director

Rob Swanson

Yvonne Orlich

After several weeks of exhaustive searching and interviewing, the Sun Lakes Chorale has a new director. Rob Swanson will start with the Chorale in the fall, and we are looking forward to a very successful season.

Rob is very talented, experienced, energetic, and eager to get started. He hails from Illinois and attended Illinois Wesleyan University. He received his Bachelors of Music from Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., and is 95% finished with his master’s in church music from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Wake Forest, N.C. He is well versed in all genres of music and has sung with the Phoenix Symphony Chorus. Rob has been married to his wife Melissa for 27 years, and they have two children. Their son Caleb is 22 and recently married Sylvia, a student at ASU. Their daughter Myah, adopted as an infant from Taiwan, will be a junior in high school this fall.

Rob has met with all but four of the board members and recently reviewed our music library and met with our able librarians and with our accompanist Caroline Brown who has agreed to stay on in that position. Caroline, Rob, and the entire board are excited to get underway in September. Rob has already put together a rough draft of the program for the December Holiday Concert (Dec. 12, by the way).

We are enthusiastically looking forward to this new endeavor and have no doubt that we will be fully prepared and ready to entertain our loyal audience by the December concert. We hope all of our previous supporters will return to help us make Rob feel part of the Sun Lakes community. We can assure you that he and the Chorale will provide an excellent program for your holiday enjoyment.