Staff

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Rusty Roden, Artistic Director
2023-2024 marks the 10th season Rusty Roden has led Chorale Acadienne and his 22nd year as a member. He is honored and humbled, this season, to move into the position of Artistic Director.  He has extensive choral, musical theatre, and opera performance experience dating back to his first performance in Benjamin Britten's Noyes' Fludde in 8th grade, in the role of Jaffett, alongside Met Opera great Chester Ludgin (1925-2003).  Other musical theatre roles include Lt. Cable in South Pacific, Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Lun Thah in The King and I, Sparky in Forever Plaid, and Rolf in Sound of Music (to name a few).  In 2017, 2018, and 2019, Rusty was invited to work with musicians at the Gamma School of the Arts, in Kotlas, Russia, which is located in the Arkhangelsk Oblast region, in northwestern Russia. Most recently, Rusty had the opportunity to participate in Jubilate Mozart! in Salzburg, Austria, under the batons of János Czifra and Jo-Michael Scheibe. 

Rusty is retired from the music classroom, most recently with Episcopal School of Acadiana.   His choirs have performed as a part of the Christmas by Candlelight concert with Chorale Acadienne in The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.  In 2008 the Ascension Episcopal School Middle School Choir, under his direction, was invited to sing at the 29^th Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana.  His choirs have also performed with Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Mariusz Smolij, and for the inauguration of the current president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, E. Joseph Savoie. He is honored to continue serving as co-artistic director for Chorale.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee, and a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette studying under Dr. James Haygood.  Rusty is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education. In his retirement from the classroom, he enjoys conducting Chorale as well as composing, gardening, traveling, and painting. He resides in Lafayette with his wife, Dr. Karen Roden.  They have two children adult children, Hallie and John.

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Kevin Martin, Collaborative Pianist
has been the organist at St. Pius X Catholic church in Lafayette since 1990. He studied piano and organ at Shenandoah Conservatory, Roanoke College, and LSU. From 1998-2013, he was the choral accompanist at UL Lafayette, leaving there to become the organist at John Paul the Great academy, where he currently teaches organ and accompanies the school masses.