Music Director
Nick Strimple
Nick Strimple has served as Music Director of the Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale since 1998. He was educated at Baylor University and the University of Southern California, where he has served on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music since 1996.
Firmly established as a musician outside of academia, Nick Strimple has conducted some of the world’s leading ensembles, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chorus and Orchestra of the Polish National Opera, the Slovak Radio Orchestra, the Prague Radio Choir, the Oratorio Society of New York and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra; his compositions have been commissioned by the Vienna International Organ Festival, J. Paul Getty Museum, London Youth Choir and others. He has also served as arranger/director for Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart, Air Supply and other leading artists. He served as Director of Music at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church for thirty-five years and as Music Director of the Choral Society of Southern California for thirty-one years.
Dr. Strimple is recognized internationally for his work with music related to the Holocaust, and has lectured on the subject at Cambridge University (Queens’ College), Yale University, Oxford University (Magdalen College and Yiddish Studies Institute), Wellesley College, University of Miami, University of Minnesota, Oregon Bach Festival, Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, International Viktor Ullmann Conference (Beit Theresienstadt, Israel) and other distinguished institutions and festivals. He has presented lecture/concerts at national conferences of the American Musicological Society, the American Choral Directors Association, the Cantors Assembly and other organizations.
Nick Strimple is author of two critically acclaimed books, Choral Music in the Twentieth Century and Choral Music in the Nineteenth Century, and has contributed to several others, including the Cambridge Companion to Choral Music and the multi-award winning Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis. His articles and reviews have appeared in Music & Letters, American Choral Review, The Choral Journal, The Orel Foundation Online Journal, Journal of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Music Library Notes, The Austrian History Yearbook, and other journals.
He has served as a consultant to several museums and Holocaust Memorials, including the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. During 2001-02, Strimple served on the California State Legislature’s Citizens Commission for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education, which resulted in legislation mandating the teaching of genocide awareness in California schools. He served as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Interfaith Symposium and Concert from 2003-2014. He is currently vice president of the David Nowakowsky Foundation, and sits on the Advisory Boards of the Jewish Music Commission of Los Angeles and the Aminadav Aloni Music Foundation. He also serves on the USC Shoah Foundation Faculty Advisory Council and the USC Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities Steering Committee.