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 On Friday, October 17, 2008
the thirteenth McManus award will be presented to
Dr. Richard Proulx at the Milwaukee National Meeting banquet

Dr. Richard Proulx

Dr. Richard Proulx, a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, began piano studies at age six and benefited from the unique musical training then fostered in that city's parochial and private schools, where twice-daily solfege and choral singing were emphasized. He attended MacPhail College and the University of Minnesota, with further studies at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, NJ, St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, MN and the Royal School of Church Music in England.

Proulx's organ studies were with Ruth Dindorf, Arthur Jennings, Rupert Sircom, Gerald Bales and Peter Hallock; extensive choral seminars were undertaken with Donald Bryant, Robert Shaw and Roger Wagner. He studied composition with Leopold Bruenner, Bruce Larsen and Gerald Bales.

During 1980-1994, Richard Proulx was Organist-Music Director at the historic Cathedral of the Holy Name, Chicago, where he did much to strengthen that cathedral's outreach program to the city by establishing an extensive and innovative music program. As hoped by the visionary cathedral rector, Bishop Timothy J. Lyne, the consistent excellence of this broad based and varied liturgical music program became a model for cathedrals across the country. The highly acclaimed concert series Music for a Great Space involved the cathedral choirs and many of the finest instrumentalists in the Chicago area. The choirs toured the Midwest in 1982 and 1991, Europe in 1988. Proulx was also responsible for the planning and installation of two new mechanical action organs for the cathedral: Casavant (Quebec, 1981) and Flentrop (Holland, 1989).

Before coming to Chicago, Proulx served for ten years (1970-1980) at St. Thomas Church, Medina/Seattle, where he directed three choirs and chamber orchestra, established a tradition of liturgical handbell ringing, and was organist at Temple de Hirsch Sinai. Previous positions included St. Charles Parish, Tacoma; St. Stephen's Church, Seattle; fifteen years at the Church of the Holy Childhood in Saint Paul (1953-1968).

Richard Proulx is a widely published composer of more than three hundred works, including congregational music in every form, sacred and secular choral works, song cycles, two operas, as well as instrumental and organ music. He has served as a consultant for such recent hymnals at The Hymnal 1982, New Yale Hymnal, The Methodist Hymnal, Worship II and III, and has contributions in the Mennonite Hymnal and the Presbyterian Hymnal. Proulx was a member of the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church and was a founding member of the Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians in 1984. He has conducted choral festivals and workshops across America as well as in Canada, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand.

Proulx was appointed composer-in-residence for 1994-1995 at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City, UT and was named a 1995 Visiting Fellow at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX. He has served on the summer faculties of the Montreat Conference on Music and Worship, the Evergreen Conference, St. John's University School of Theology, and serves as vice president of The Society for Catholic Liturgy. Currently a free-lance composer and conductor, he has also been an editorial consultant to GIA Publications and Augsburg Fortress Press.

In the field of commercial music, Proulx composed the 1971 theme song for Union Pacific Railroad as well as an orchestral score for the film The Golden Door. Two recent arrangements sung by The Cathedral Singers were featured in a May 1996 episode of ER on NBC and his brief organ setting of Veni Creator Spiritus is heard in the 1997 film The Devil's Own.

In 1991, Richard Proulx founded The Cathedral Singers as an independent professional recording ensemble. This group has sung a number of live concerts in the Midwest and has produced over fifteen compact disc recordings of a great variety of choral music.

Richard has received many prestigious awards. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a commission for a new opera in 1989, the same year in which he was presented the Gold Medal of the Archdiocese of Chicago by the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. In 1994, he received the doctorate honoris causa from the General Theological Seminary in New York City and also the BENE Award from Modern Liturgy Magazine as "the most significant liturgical composer of the last twenty years." In 1995, he was cited by Duquesne University for outstanding work as a church musician and in recognition of the library of music given to Duquesne. The National Association of Pastoral Musicians named him 1995 Pastoral Musician of the Year. In 1998, Richard Proulx received the Pax Christi Award from St. John's University, Collegeville, MN.

A rare combination of talents as composer, conductor, music editor and organist coupled with wide experience across denominational lines have given Richard Proulx a unique perspective of both the opportunities and the challenges found in liturgical music-making in our time. He remains committed to the enriching and balancing of the role of the arts in the lives of all people.