Profiles

David Cherwien is well known throughout the United States as church musician, conductor, organist, composer, and workshop/worship leader. He has a special passion for congregational song, and he presents hymn festivals in many parts of the country each year. He is the third person to be called as cantor at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, a congregation known for its liturgical worship and love of hymnody (Mark Sedio and Paul Manz are Cherwien’s predecessors in the cantor role). In 2002 Cherwien was appointed music director for the National Lutheran Choir, a sixty-voice professional choir based in the Twin Cities. Cherwien holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in organ performance, theory/composition, and choral music education from the University of Minnesota and Augsburg College. He has also studied organ, composition, and conducting at the Berlin Church Music School and in Aix-en-Provence, France, and he is a fellow of Melodious Accord, studying with Alice Parker. Cherwien has more than a hundred published works for choir and organ and is author of Let the People Sing, a practical guide for creative congregational song leadership published by Concordia Publishing House. He is past president of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and in October 2000 he was named a distinguished alumnus of Augsburg College in Minneapolis.