OUR COMPOSERS
Deanna Wehrspann
Composer Deanna Wehrspann is a professional piano accompanist/collaborator, choral singer, and church musician.
As a composer of choral, vocal, piano, and string orchestra music, she has recent commissions from North Central American Choral Directors Association (NC-ACDA) Elementary Honor Choir and South Dakota Music Teachers Association, among others. She has been Composer-in-Residence at Ucross Foundation and Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts in recent years, and has multiple compositional premieres each year. She has choral music published by Augsburg Fortress and upcoming by Choristers Guild Sing! in 2017.
She has accompanied extensively for University of South Dakota, University of Sioux Falls (SD), Augustana University (SD), South Dakota All-State Chorus, South Dakota High School Honor Choir, South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Minnehaha Mandskor, and Our Savior’s Lutheran Church (Sioux Falls, SD). She has accompanied choirs directed by Weston Noble, Henry Leck, Brian A. Schmidt, Charles Bruffy, Vijay Singh, Joe Miller, Christopher Aspaas, James Rodde, and many others.
A professional soprano with South Dakota Chorale, featured at the 2015 national ACDA conference, she has also sung under Sir David Willcox, John Rutter, Jon Washburn, Bradley Ellingboe, Frank Pooler, Rod Walker, and many others. She has degrees from Augustana College (SD), Luther Seminary (MN), and Emporia State University (KS), and studied for a year in Leipzig, Germany, on full scholarship from Lutheran World Federation.
She is a member of American Composers Forum, International Alliance for Women in Music, Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, American Choral Directors Association, Hymn Society in the US & Canada, and Music Teachers National Association. She and her husband Joel have two grown daughters and live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Further information can be found at her website: deannawehrspannmusic.com