Catherine Roma


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Catherine Roma

she/her

For over 40 years, Dr. Catherine Roma (she/her) has created vibrant choral communities that reach across barriers of race, religion, class, sexual orientation and age. She works to translate the values of social justice and inclusion into fundamental experiences of community for both audience and singers. She does this through music that spans a wide variety of styles and cultures and through strategic efforts to develop membership and audiences that reflect rich diversity.

Cathy became one of the founding mothers of the women’s choral movement, an international network of over 70 women’s choruses, when she started Anna Crusis Women’s Choir in her native Philadelphia in 1975. She founded MUSE Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir in 1983 after coming to Ohio to do graduate work at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music where she completed her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in 1989.

Catherine is Professor of Music, Emerita at Wilmington College. Through her long association at Wilmington, Catherine founded and directed UMOJA Men’s Chorus at Warren Correctional Institution, in Lebanon, Ohio (1993-2016). After her retirement from the college and MUSE, and prior to the pandemic, Roma founded and conducted choirs inside three Ohio prisons. Currently she conducts NIA Men’s Chorus at Chillicothe Correctional Institution.

Roma served as Minister of Music at St. John’s Unitarian Universalist Church in Cincinnati for 29 years, and was co-founder and co-director of the Martin Luther King Coalition Chorale for 22. In 2012 Roma founded and conducts the 100-voice World House Choir in Yellow Springs, OH.

Roma believes choral singing, the power of the human voice raised in song, brings diverse people together to inspire change; it is a balm that heals and transforms our world and ourselves. Singing together changes the air we breathe. Think globally, sing locally.

Activist, Chorus Artistic Director, Composer, Conductor, Educator