Jennifer Budziak, D.M.A.

Jennifer Kerr Budziak is a Chicago-area conductor, mezzo-soprano, composer, and author. A sought-after presenter on vocal technique and choral conducting, she has led workshops at conferences and events nationwide.

Dr. Budziak holds degrees in choral conducting from Northwestern University and Indiana University, and in piano performance from The Catholic University of America. She has served on Loyola's choral faculty for ten years and has also taught at North Central College, Concordia University, St. Xavier University, and the Catholic Theological Union.

Active in Catholic music ministry for more than three decades, Dr. Budziak has served on the Council of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians and is a frequent speaker at its national conferences and institutes. She is the author or co-author of numerous publications on music, sight-reading, and congregational singing, and her choral compositions appear in the catalogs of several major publishers.

A member of the Chicago Symphony Chorus for over thirty years, Dr. Budziak sang in the ensemble as a chorus member from 1992 until 2022 and was an assistant conductor from 2018 until 2026. She is currently guest conductor of the Heritage Chorale in Oak Park and works on the choral staff of the Good Memories Choir, a community-based choral organization using music to serve older adults experiencing memory loss. Her areas of research interests include liminal/ritual studies and the social and identity-forming implications of community music-making. 

 

Dr. Budziak is also an award-winning fiction writer, published by the Minotaur Books imprint of MacMillan Publishing.

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"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."—Leonard Bernstein