Lynda Hasseler

A conductor who makes choirs tell a story

Lynda R. Hasseler, D.M.A., served as Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities in the Conservatory of Music at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, from 1990 until her retirement in 2026. When she took the helm of the Chapel Choir in 1990, she became the first woman to head a choral program at a Lutheran college or university.

A native of Platte, South Dakota, she graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and earned her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in conducting from Michigan State University.

At Capital she directed the Chapel Choir, founded by Ellis E. Snyder in 1928, along with the Choral Union and the a cappella ensemble Philomel, and taught undergraduate and graduate conducting at Capital and at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. As director and producer of the university’s beloved Christmas Festival, she filled Mees Hall to capacity every December.

The Chapel Choir years

She took the Chapel Choir across the United States and around the world: to Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic for its 75th anniversary in 2003, then to France and Switzerland, South Africa, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium, and, on its first visit to South America, Chile and Argentina. Her choirs sang for ACDA Central Division conferences in 2002, 2010, 2014, and 2018, the ACDA National Conference in 2019, and the Ohio Music Education Association.

In 2012 the Chapel Choir entered its first competition of any kind, the World Choir Games in Cincinnati, and won gold medals in both the Mixed Choirs and Musica Sacra categories of the Champions Competition. It finished second in the world among mixed choirs, with the highest composite score of any American choir. In 2016 it gave its solo debut on the Carnegie Hall stage.

She championed new music. With the Chapel Choir, the Choral Union, and composer Jake Runestad, she shares the 2017–18 American Prize, Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music. In 2019 she led the premiere of Runestad’s “A Silence Haunts Me,” ACDA’s Brock Commission, at the American Choral Directors Association National Conference in Kansas City. A project she began in 2020 led to the commissioning of “Dark Matters” by composer Joel Thompson and poet Samiya Bashir, which her choirs premiered in Mees Hall in April 2023. In 2017 she launched Capital’s Young Choral Artists Festival, with Runestad as its first composer-in-residence.

Her programming drew on classic and contemporary a cappella literature, sacred and secular, chosen from a global perspective. Her choirs became known for diverse repertoire, thoughtful staging, and a range of tone colors suited to each style, and her narrative, theme-based concerts were built to tell a story. Her final season closed with “Buscar y Cantar,” a farewell tour to Chile and Argentina in June 2026.

On the podium

Dr. Hasseler travels widely as a clinician, guest conductor, and presenter. She made her Carnegie Hall conducting debut on Leap Day, February 29, 2016, in Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” and Ēriks Ešenvalds’ “Trinity Te Deum,” and returned to conduct festival choruses there in 2024. She has led All-State choirs in South Dakota, Michigan, and Colorado, headlined the ACDA Michigan and Pennsylvania conferences, guest-conducted a Festival of Choirs in Muscat, Oman, and served on international juries, including the 14th Concorso Corale Internazionale in Riva del Garda, Italy, and Sing Berlin! in 2018.

She has served on the Music for All National Artistic Advisory Committee and as president of the South Central Region of Ohio ACDA. With composer Craig Courtney, she has served as co-editor of the Capital University Choral Series, published by Beckenhorst Press, which includes her arrangement of “Come to the Water” and their joint arrangement of “I Will Rise.”

As a singer

A mezzo-soprano, she has performed, toured, and recorded with the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus, singing in Carnegie Hall with both. She toured France with the Shaw Festival Chorus, appearing as a soloist, and toured internationally with the Oregon Bach Festival Choir, performing in Kraków and Warsaw, Santiago de Compostela, and Frankfurt and Stuttgart. She shares in the Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance won by the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra under Helmuth Rilling for Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Credo,” presented at the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001. At home in Columbus she also sang with the Cantari Singers and Vocal Colour.

Beyond the music

A firm believer in the power of choral singing to open minds, soften hearts, and transform lives, she will tell you that an engaged rehearsal, an expressive phrase, and beautiful choral tone shaped with the “best students in the world” are among life’s most meaningful moments. Only one thing tops them all: being mom to Hannah, the “best daughter in the whole world.”