Van Gilmer

Conductor, composer and vocalist Van Gilmer has had a long and distinguished music career, particularly in the field of gospel music.  In 1992 he was appointed director of the Bahá’í World Congress Gospel Choir, performing for the worldwide gathering of 35,000 who attended that historic event in New York City.  For sixteen years he has directed the Bahá’í Gospel Singers, who have toured the United States, Canada, and Europe, and are featured on several recordings.  For seven years he was director of the Metropolitan Washington Bahá’í Chorale, and is currently the music director at the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.

Van’s rich and soulful tenor voice has been heard in concerts and recordings of the Voices of Bahá in Carnegie Hall, and with the Maly Moscow Symphony, the Slovak Radio Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Czech National Symphony, the Budapest Symphony and others in pcerformances throughout the world.  He was awarded the Gold Prize at the Johannes Brahms International Choral Festival in Germany in 2001 when he directed the Voices of Bahá Gospel Choir in a program including some of his own compositions.

Gilmer’s compositions include We Have Come to Sing Praises, I’m So Glad, O Thou Compassionate Lord, Cause Me to Taste the Divine Sweetness, He has Come Back, Soon Will All That Dwell on Earth, and many others.  His song My God, My Adored One was awarded Best Gospel Song by the Independent Music Awards in 2006.

Van is widely in demand as a music educator, often called upon at schools and conferences to lecture on the history and practice of gospel music, and to train singers of all races and backgrounds in this universally beloved style of music.