Andrew Shenton

Andrew Shenton is a scholar, prize-winning author, performer, educator, consultant, cultural historian, and administrator based in Boston, Massachusetts. Born in England, his first professional music training was at The Royal College of Music in London, where he studied under a scholarship from The Royal College of Organists. While at the RCM he read for a BMus degree at London University and was an organ scholar at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Dr. Shenton moved to the US to study for a Master’s degree at Yale University and then for a PhD at Harvard University. His diverse interests are reflected in his Master’s thesis which concerns the renaissance of sacred art in Britain since 1945, and his doctoral dissertation which is a musico-linguistic study of the twentieth-century French mystic composer Olivier Messiaen.

Dr. Shenton has a Master’s degree in organ performance from Yale and holds the Fellowship diploma of the Royal College of Organists. He has toured in Europe and the US as a conductor, recitalist, and clinician, and his three solo organ recordings have received international acclaim. In addition to diplomas in both piano and organ Dr. Shenton holds the Choir Training diploma of the Royal College of Organists. A noted choral conductor, Dr. Shenton has numerous recording and producing credits notably with the Navona label. He maintains an active performance career because he believes it is important that any scholarly engagement with the arts is not divorced from its creation and performance. He has pioneered contemporary music in a variety of styles and has given more than eighty world or US premieres by composers such as Geoffrey Burgon, Joe Utterback, John Tavener, Judith Weir, and Arvo Pärt. He has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards including a Harvard Merit Fellowship, Harvard’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, and a Fellowship from the Center for the Humanities at Boston University.

Moving freely between disciplines, Dr. Shenton’s academic research is best subsumed under the heading ‘cultural criticism.’ This is demonstrated by his recent and ongoing work in popular music, which includes an essay that analyses the acoustic ecology of rave music as a way of negotiating an ecstatic experience (Fordham University Press, 2015), and lectures and writing on how hip-hop has become a complex soundscape that can signal religious identity. A subsidiary to this work is his interest in how sound studies deal with issues of cognition, and the physical and mental elements of transformation and transcendence. His ground-breaking work on Olivier Messiaen includes a monograph Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs (Ashgate, 2008), which won the 2009 Miller Book Award; and a collection of essays which he edited titled Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2010). More recently, his work on the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt includes several lectures and recitals, and publications such as The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt (CUP, 2012), which he edited, and a monograph titled Arvo Pärt’s Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956-2015 (CUP, 2018). Dr. Shenton has been a frequent lecturer at Lincoln Center in New York City as part of his work with the arts in the public square. His recent publications include a monograph on Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie (CUP, 2023), and a forthcoming monograph that discusses issues of public engagement with art based on analysis and exegesis of the modernist approaches to theological archetypes.

Dr. Shenton is interested in the process and practice of education in the twenty-first century and its intersections with business and the economy. He engages with broad issues of pedagogy, especially those to do with technological advance, including blended and online education. He is engaged in pioneering work in ePublishing, and with strategies for student recruitment and retention, and is especially concerned with the role of the arts in the contemporary curriculum and the opportunities this provides for students interested in careers in the arts and related fields. Dr. Shenton also works as a researcher and consultant in several fields, including arts administration and business.

Dr. Shenton is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London. He works artistically and administratively as conductor of the professional chamber choir Vox Futura. As a faculty member at Boston University Dr. Shenton has a broad portfolio of responsibilities. He holds appointments in the School of Theology, School of Music (College of Fine Arts), and College of Arts and Sciences. He is a tenured Professor of Music, the James R. Houghton Scholar of Sacred Music, Director of the Boston University Messiaen Project [BUMP], and Director of the Theology and Arts Initiative [TAI].

Learn more at andrewshenton.com.

Publications

Books and edited collections

Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie (Elements in Music Since 1945), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Christian Sacred Music in the Americas (Andrew Shenton & Joanna Smolko, editors), (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

Arvo Pärt’s Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956-2015, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Exploring Christian Song (M. Jennifer Bloxam & Andrew Shenton, editors), (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017).

The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt (Andrew Shenton, editor), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Messiaen the Theologian (Andrew Shenton, editor), (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). Paperback edition (London: Routledge, 2016).

Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs: Notes Towards Understanding his Music (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). Paperback edition (London: Routledge, 2016). Winner of the 2009 Miller Book Award.

Chapters in books

“Apocalyptic themes in the music of Olivier Messiaen,” in Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Lorenzo DiTommaso and Colin McAllister, editors), (forthcoming Leiden, Brill: 2023).

“Messiaen at Sainte-Trinité, Paris,” in Messiaen in Context (Robert Sholl, editor), (in press, Cambridge University Press, 2023).

“Messiaen on Record: the Organ Music,” in Messiaen in Context (Robert Sholl, editor), (in press, Cambridge University Press, 2023).

“Exploring Christian Song in the Americas,” (with Joanna Smolko), in Christian Sacred Music in the Americas (Andrew Shenton & Joanna Smolko, editors), (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), xi-xxi.

“A Cluster of Gathering Shadows: Exposition and Exegesis in James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross,” in James Macmillan Studies (George Parsons and Robert Sholl, editors), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 149-166.

“The Rest is Silence: Pärt’s use of Silence,” in Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred (Peter Bouteneff, Jeffers Engelhardt, and Robert Saler, editors), (NYC: Fordham University Press, 2020), pp. 107-126.

“1 + 1 = 1: The Elegant Mathematics of Arvo Pärt’s Tintinnabulation,” in Twentieth-Century Music and Mathematics (Roberto Illiano, editor), (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019), pp. 111-128.

“Performing Pärt,” in White Light: Arvo Pärt in Media, Culture and Politics (Laura Dolp, editor), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 212-237.

“Contemplating Christian Song in Context,” (with M. Jennifer Bloxam) in Exploring Christian Song (M. Jennifer Bloxam & Andrew Shenton, editors), (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017), pp. xi-xix.

“Magnificat: Arvo Pärt the Quiet Evangelist,” in Exploring Christian Song (M. Jennifer Bloxam & Andrew Shenton, editors), (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017), pp. 155-172.

“For Whom the Bells Toll: Arvo Pärt and the Appealing Promise of his Passio,” in Contemporary Music and Spirituality (Sander van Maas and Robert Sholl, editors), (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 17-36.

Recordings

Christopher J. Hoh, Christmas Carols (World Premiere Recordings), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6299, Dashing, Volume 3, 2022).

Kong-Yu Wong, Three Lyrics of Lu Fang Weng (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6299, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 3, 2020).

Scott Anthony Shell, Gitanjali 1 (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6299, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 3, 2020).

Christopher J. Hoh, Music at the Heart of Creation (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6299, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 3, 2020).

Blind Guardian, Legacy of the Dark Lands, chorus conductor, Vox Futura (Nuclear Blast GmbH, 2019).

Scott Solak, Ave Maria (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6221, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 2, 2019).

Whitman Brown, Psalm 23 (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6221, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 2, 2019).

L. Peter Deutsch, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6221, Voices of Earth and Air, Volume 2, 2019).

Mark Dal Porto, Three Songs for Choir (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura. NH: Navona Records NV6220, Peace, Nature & Renewal, 2019).

Ēriks Ešenvalds, Stars, conductor, Boston Choral Ensemble, in conjunction with the Hayden Planetarium of the Museum of Science, Boston (Digital video recording project, 2018).

Alicia Terzian, Canto a mi misma, conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6088, Off the Edge, 2017).

Jonathan David Little, Gloria, Op. 18 (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6113, Woefully Arrayed, 2017).

Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed, Op. 13 (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records NV6113, Woefully Arrayed, 2017).

Juli Nunlist, Spells for SATB Choir (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (NH: Navona Records, Spells, 2017).

Joanne Carey, The Tyger (World Premiere Recording), conductor, Vox Futura (Navona Records, NV6061, Cadence: New Works for Voices in Verse, 2016).

Blind Guardian, Beyond the Red Mirror, chorus conductor, Vox Futura (Nuclear Blast GmbH, 2015).

Still, still night: Music for Christmas. The Boston Choral Ensemble, directed by Andrew Shenton (Futura Productions / Oasis Records / Kelham Productions, 2015).

Twentieth Century British Organ Music. Solo organ CD recorded on the organ at Holy Name West Roxbury (Oasis Records / Kelham Productions, 2015).