Donald Neuen retires after 50 years of collegiate conducting

About 60 years ago, a church choir asked second-year Bluffton University student Donald Neuen to step in as conductor, a request that the undergraduate accepted hesitantly.

But when he stood in front of the church choir, any uncertainty that Neuen had about his future – whether he should be a professional baseball player or a jazz drummer – was wiped away with one wave of the baton. Although Neuen said his first attempts at conducting were shaky, the experience set the stage for a 50-year career in mentoring thousands of collegiate chorale members in venues from Atlanta to Mexico.

Neuen, a professor of choral conducting and director of choral studies, will retire at the end of the school year after 20 years of teaching at UCLA. In addition to creating graduate and doctoral programs in choral conducting at UCLA, Neuen is a guest conductor of Angeles Chorale, a professional Los Angeles-based ensemble, the choir director of the internationally televised “Hour of Power” weekly broadcast and the conductor of the UCLA Chorale, an ensemble composed mainly of non-music students.

Over his past 50 years of collegiate conducting at UCLA, the Eastman School of Music, the University of Wisconsin, Ball State University and the University of Tennessee, Neuen said he never applied for a job – instead, positions came to him. Neuen cites his good fortune as stemming from a strong faith in a universal deity, a belief he said he has held for many decades.

“I don’t preach religion, but when I was 25 years old, I really felt that there was a god. So I said, ‘I’ll give you my music, my talent. I’ll just give it to you, and I’ll go anywhere, do anything. But lead me,’” Neuen said. “Nobody has to go to church or temple, and nobody has to belong to a certain religion, but if you can have faith that there is a universal being that can help you, you will be helped. My life is proof.”

Throughout his career, Neuen said he has seen thousands of students come and go, many of them excelling as soloists or as part of professional ensembles. One of his former graduate students, Rebecca Lord, joined him as part of the choral activities faculty after she completed her doctoral studies under his tutelage in 2011.

Lord, now the associate director of choral activities, said choosing Neuen to be her mentor was an easy decision because of his intense work ethic and passionate methods of teaching graduate students to feel confident on the conductor’s podium.

“I wanted to work with him because he pushes his students harder than any other teacher I’ve ever seen,” Lord said. “But despite that, he’s the first to be their cheerleader and to stand up and celebrate with them.”

With Lord and other faculty members still teaching and conducting at UCLA, Neuen said he feels comfortable leaving his students in good hands and allowing fresh and capable talent to take his place at the helm of the choral conducting department.

Although Neuen has been conducting for five decades, he said he is not ready to retire. However, he said he was forced to retire because of the two-hour commute from his home in Anaheim Hills to UCLA, a long journey made longer by traffic that is simply too risky for Neuen to make every day. If it weren’t for the commute, Neuen said, he would continue to teach and conduct the UCLA Chorale.

“An 80-year-old person should not be in California traffic on the I-5. It’s too dangerous for other people, as well as myself,” Neuen said. “But I used to live across Wilshire Boulevard, and it would take me 15 minutes to walk here. If I lived there, I would continue conducting my students in the chorals.”

Because the UCLA Chorale is designed to allow non-music students to participate in the arts, Neuen said he tries to make singing more relatable for those students who are in different fields of study, allowing them to understand the role that choir plays in their lives.

Neuen said keeping those students who do not study music in mind opened a new perspective of how to teach and appreciate music.

“There’s only one reason for the arts: to express feelings,” Neuen said. “My students tell me, ‘(Singing) brings joy and happiness and relief from the strain of the pressures of my major.’ That’s why we have the arts – for people.”

Neal Stulberg, a professor of music and director of orchestral studies, said Neuen’s passion for spreading the arts to those who may not have had prior exposure to music performance is evident in his fierce, emotional teaching and conducting style.

Stulberg performed a piano solo for a rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasia in C minor, Op. 80,” a work for full chorus, piano and orchestra, in Neuen’s final concert of his career.

“Musicians learn from their elders, and all musicians descend from a musical lineage,” Stulberg said. “Professor Neuen is a representative of a valuable part of a great musical tradition, and his blend of energy and quest for excellence will be missed.”

Despite his retirement from collegiate conducting, Neuen said he will still lead the “Hour of Power” choir and guest conduct ensembles around the country if invited to do so.

Neuen said he hopes future generations of student musicians learn to achieve perfection through perseverance and passion, something Neuen said he has learned in his 50 years of collegiate conducting.

Through hard work and dedication over the course of his career, Neuen said his work has achieved something close to perfection by pushing every choir and orchestra he conducts to aim higher than simply excellence. He said his career is a testament to the lessons he has learned and applied not only to his students, but also to his own life and journey.

“Perfection is possible – not all the time, but for a lot of the time – for any athletic team, an orchestra or chorus, a business, an industry,” Neuen said. “We often settle for less because we don’t know perfection is possible, but as an actress’ father once said, ‘Aim for the stars just to get over the roof.’”