Assistant Professor
Director of the Music Program

John Baboukis is the Director of the Music Program at the American University in Cairo, where he teaches courses in general music and music history, and directs the AUC Chamber Chorus. He is also the conductor of the Cairo Choral Society, one of the premiere choral ensembles in Cairo. He has taught conducting and directed numerous choral groups at McGill University, the College of Saint Catherine (in Saint Paul, Minnesota), the University of Georgia, and, most recently, at Illinois State University, where he served as Director of Choral Activities for two years immediately before coming to Egypt. He is a specialist in medieval and renaissance music, and was the founder and director of the Saint Paul Early Music Ensemble and Les voix médiévales de Montréal. He has also been trained in the performance of Byzantine Chant, and has served for many years as a chanter in the Orthodox Church.

Professor Baboukis holds a Doctor of Music degree from the School of Music at Indiana University, one of the foremost in the world, and the largest, where he was the first doctoral student ever permitted to submit an original composition (his Requiem Mass, for chorus, orchestra, and soloists) as a dissertation for a conducting degree. He has written a substantial body of vocal music, as well as chamber works and music for piano, harpsichord, clavichord, and organ. He has been awarded a McKnight Composition Fellowship, and, in addition to receiving numerous private commissions, has twice won composer commissioning grants from the Jerome Foundation, through the American Composers Forum. Professor Baboukis is married and has two children.