Brenda Hanson Mohr

1962 -  

Brenda Mohr, is director of the choral program at Loma Linda University Academy, a position she has held since 2018. Most recently she completed a D.M.A.in choral conducting at the University of Washington in the spring of 2018. Prior to beginning graduate study in 2013, she had taught choral music grades 5-12 for 28 years at Glendale Adventist Academy in California, a record tenure for a music teacher at that school.

In those years, the Glendale Academy Chorale traveled regionally and nationally, in California, Arizona, and the Northwest multiple times and to Chicago and Washington, D.C., three times.  In 2000 it won the American Choral Directors (ACDA) Golden State South Choral Competition. Brenda received the Zapara Excellence in Teaching Award in 1991 and the NAD Alumni Achievement Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004.

While participating in band and choir from the fifth through twelfth grades, she was inspired by her choir director, Hugh Winn, to become a music teacher. Accordingly, following graduation from Lodi Academy in 1981, she enrolled at Pacific Union College as a music education major, with piano and organ as her performance areas. In her senior year, she received the Outstanding Performer\'s Certificate.

Brenda graduated from PUC in 1985 and began teaching band and choral music at Glendale Adventist Academy and its grade school program that fall. Four years later, Craig Mohr, who had just graduated from PUC, was hired to conduct the band program, and Brenda assumed direction of just the choral program, which included a 5/6 grade school choir, junior high choir, the Glendale Academy Chorale, and men\'s and women\'s choirs. With both of them able to focus exclusively on their respective programs, they developed a music department widely known for its excellence.

Brenda and Craig married in July 1991, and four years later their daughter, Kaitlin Jean, was born. Kaitlin plays the oboe and is a singer. Brenda completed an M.Mus. with a choral conducting emphasis in 1993 at California State University, Northridge, where she studied conducting with John Alexander.

ds/2018

Source: Information provided by Brenda Hanson Mohr, June 2011 and December 2013 and summer 2018.