Dr. Wayne A. Barr is Director of Choral Activities and Interim Chair, Department of Fine and Performing Arts and Sciences. He earned degrees in church music and choral conducting from Westminster Choir College (B.M.), Southern Methodist University (M.M., M.S.M.), and The University of Michigan (D.M.A.).  He has served as organist and choir director at churches in Alabama, Michigan, New Jersey and Texas.

Under Dr. Barr’s direction, the Tuskegee Choir conducts annual regional tours of the United States.  The 2017 East Coast Tour included concerts in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia.  This year, singing outside the U.S. for only the second time ever, the choir will perform in four cities in Canada.

As an organ recitalist, Dr. Barr has twice been a featured organist at the Colour of Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. He is also a music workshop clinician. From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Barr was co-director of the Italian Opera Study Abroad Program, which offers students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) a four-week study of Italian opera with a renowned coach in Italy. He served as a national conductor for the 2010 Kennedy Center performance of the 105 Voices of History, a choir made up of student representatives of the 105 HBCUs as defined by the White House Initiative on HBCUs. In February 2015, Dr. Barr presented concerts with Coro Sinfonico Bolivia and American soloists in La Paz and Cochabamba, Bolivia under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia. In June, 2017 he taught at the Härnösands Folkhögskola in Härnösand, Sweden.