Director of Music, Organist
Patrick McCreless is Organist and Director of Music at First Presbyterian Church of New Haven, where he has served since 1999. As Professor Emeritus of Music Theory at Yale University, Pat taught music theory in the Department of Music, of which he was Chair in the years 2001-2007. He holds a Master of Music in Music Theory from the University of Michigan, and the Ph.D. in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester. Before coming to Yale in 1998, he taught for fifteen years at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was Associate Director of the School of Music, and five years before that at the Eastman School of Music. As a scholar, he has published on a wide range of musical topics—the music of Schubert, Wagner, Elgar, Nielsen and Shostakovich; the history of music theory; music performance and analysis; and music and rhetoric. In recent years he has lectured on these topics in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Brazil, and China, as well as in the US. He also holds church music and congregational song dear to his heart. He delights in choir leadership, and always welcomes new singers!
