A native of St. Louis, Ronald Jenkins has been conductor of the Columbus Symphony Chorus and Chamber Chorus since 1982. He conceived the idea for the CSO’s popular Holiday Pops concerts and conducted those annual performances from their beginning in 1983 through 2019. He prepared the chorus for their Carnegie Hall debut with the CSO in the spring of 2001, where the New York critics praised the “choral singing of impeccable realization and subtle shading.” In 2010, he conducted the CSO’s only complete performances of Handel’s Messiah, which were lauded for their “quick pacing and brisk tempos” and the chorus, which “was superbly balanced and in tune and obviously well-rehearsed and confident.”

In the 2020-21 season he worked to keep the chorus engaged during the pandemic, while it was impossible to meet in person. His leading of bi-weekly Zoom meetings with the chorus presented stimulating conversations with national choral leaders as well as composers and solo orchestral members. For the first part of the 2021-22 season he gradually brought the smaller Chamber Chorus back together for concerts, culminating in May, 2022, with performances of the Beethoven 9th with the entire chorus on stage at last! For 56 years from September, 1963 to January, 2019 he served as Minister of Music and Liturgy at three large churches in St. Louis and Columbus. His choirs sang in major performance venues in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Heidelberg, Prague, and Salzburg, as well as the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

He demonstrated his piano keyboard skills in a popular recording of Gospel Hymns and jazz arrangements with retired CSO trumpeter Tom Battenberg. He has served as the Assistant Choral Director at Washington University (St. Louis), visiting Choral Director at Denison and Ohio Wesleyan Universities, and led choral workshops for Trinity Seminary and various professional organizations. He holds degrees from William Jewell College and Florida State University. He has also done extensive post-graduate study at Washington University, and studied conducting at the Tanglewood Music Festival. In 1985, he received the Columbus Dispatch Community Service Award for the Advancement of Culture. In May 2015, he was granted the Honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity Seminary in Bexley, Ohio. This season he will prepare the Symphony Chorus for performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass, and Verdi’s Rigoletto all under the direction of CSO Music Director, Rossen Milanov. Jenkins will conclude his 41 years as the CSO Symphony Chorus and Chamber Chorus director by conducting the final concert of the CSO Masterworks Series on May 19 and 20, 2023, in a program of works by Handel, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Stephen Paulus.