Music
Brazeal Dennard
1929–2010 · choral director, singer, arranger, educator
Detroit choral director and music educator who founded the Brazeal Dennard Chorale in 1972 and carried the African American spiritual onto the concert stage.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 81- Detroit years
- 1929–2010
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Dennard was born in Detroit just before the Great Depression and began playing piano at eleven. He went through the Detroit Public Schools and earned a master's degree in music education at Wayne State University. In the Army he organized a choir of enlisted men and their wives, and back home he built a long career in the city's schools, becoming head of the fine arts department at Northwestern High School and later the district's director of music education, until he retired in 1989. In 1972 he founded the Brazeal Dennard Chorale, dedicated to preserving and performing the spiritual as art music, and later added a community chorus (1985) and a youth chorale for singers aged 13 to 22. He also served on the Detroit Symphony's board, taught at Wayne State, led the National Association of Negro Musicians and advised the Michigan Council for the Arts. He died in Detroit in 2010.
Highlights
- Founded the Brazeal Dennard Chorale in 1972
- Director of music education for the Detroit Public Schools
- President of the National Association of Negro Musicians
- Member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's board of directors
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1950s
Wayne State University
Dennard earned his master's in music education at Wayne State and later taught there as adjunct faculty.
Worked here · until 1989
Northwestern High School (now Detroit Collegiate Preparatory Academy at Northwestern)
Dennard headed the fine arts department of this west-side high school before becoming the district's director of music education.