CCM's graduate conducting program has been recognized by U.S. News and World Report as among the top five in the U.S.A. CCM's Choral Program was the recipient of the Dale Warland Singers Score Library and Archives and recently hosted the winter 2010 Central Division convention of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and the fall 2008 second national conference of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO).

Music Director and Conductor for twenty seasons from 1988-2008 of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati (VAE), a professional chamber choir, Rivers and the VAE received two ASCAP-Chorus America Awards for "Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music."

Rivers has conducted CCM's choral and orchestral forces in acclaimed university and regional premieres of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, Philip Glass's Symphony No. 5, Tan Dun's Water Passion after St. Matthew, Krzysztof Penderecki's Credo and Augusta Read Thomas's Ring Out, Wild Bells, To The Wild Sky.

He has led the CCM Chamber Choir and Philharmonia Orchestra in the cycle of J.S. Bach's choral/orchestral masterworks -Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass (the latter with Bastian Cleve's film, The Sound of Eternity), on a concert tour of Portugal, and before National and Central Division Conventions of ACDA.

In 2010-11 at CCM he conducts the Chamber Choir in a 400th anniversary performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and the regional premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Choir. Recent guest conducting includes the Korean premiere of Arvo Part's Berliner Mass with South Korea's Inchon City Chorale, an all-American program with the Choir of the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, China, and Haydn's Nelson Mass, Mozart's Coronation Mass and John Rutter's Requiem in Carnegie Hall. In summer 2010 Rivers leads masterclasses in Seoul, Korea, adjudicates and presents seminars at the World Choir Games in Shaoxing, China and is a guest at the Taipei International Choral Festival in Taiwan. He is a recipient of Choral America's "Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Choral Art," honoring a lifetime of significant contributions to the professional choral art. Rivers is a long-time member of the Board of Directors of Chorus America, the national service organization to develop and promote professional, volunteer, and youth choruses. Faculty, CCM since 1973.

Groups Directed

Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati