Zebulon M. Highben

Dr. Highben teaches courses in music and liturgy, conducts the Duke University Chapel Choir and Schola Cantorum, edits the Music from Duke Chapel choral series with ECS Publishing Group, and oversees Duke Chapel’s extensive music program, connecting students, community members, instrumentalists, and professional colleagues in myriad worship services and concerts.

Dr. Highben’s research interests include hymnody, liturgy, music and exegesis, the music of the Reformation, and the impact of the Second World War on German sacred music. His scholarship includes numerous articles and essays on sacred music, two choral anthologies (the Augsburg Motet Book and the Augsburg Chorale Book), a Festschrift in honor of composer Ronald A. Nelson, and more than seventy compositions published in the U.S. and Sweden. His work as a conductor, composer, and hymnist has been recognized with honors from the American Choral Directors Association; the American Composers Forum; the American Harp Society; The American Prize; the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; the Bach Choir; and The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.

Prior to his appointments at Duke Chapel and Duke Divinity School, Dr. Highben was associate professor of music at Muskingum University, where he was the 2019 recipient of the faculty’s William Rainey Harper Award for Excellence in Scholarship. Highben has served as a church musician for Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations, most recently at Trinity United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. He is an ordained deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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