biography

A conductor, composer, and scholar of sacred music, Dr. Zebulon M. Highben serves as Director of Chapel Music at Duke University Chapel and as Associate Professor of the Practice of Church Music at Duke Divinity School. He conducts the Duke University Chapel Choir and the Duke Chapel Schola Cantorum, edits the Music from Duke Chapel choral series, teaches courses in music and liturgy, and oversees the Chapel’s extensive music program, which connects students, community members, staff singers, instrumentalists, and professional colleagues in myriad worship services and concerts.

Prior to his appointments at Duke, Zebulon was Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Muskingum University. He also taught at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, Luther Seminary, and Michigan State University, where he was a graduate teaching assistant in both the choral and musicology departments. He has served as a church musician in Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations in Ohio, Minnesota, and Michigan. From 2005-2014, he was the Paul Bouman Endowed Chapel Choir Director at the Lutheran Summer Music Academy.

Choirs under Zebulon’s direction have performed for state choral conferences in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Ohio; the Ohio Music Education Association; the St. Olaf College Choral Festival; and the 2025 national conference of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). Tours have included concerts or worship services in Washington National Cathedral; Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago; St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh; the Gedächtniskirche, Berlin; and the Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Zebulon has served as a guest conductor, clinician, and lecturer across the United States, and in 2016 represented the U.S. in ACDA’s International Conductors Exchange Program with South Korea. In 2015, he was the winner of The Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting (College/University Division) from The American Prize.

As a composer, Zebulon is frequently commissioned by churches, schools, and arts organizations. More than seventy of his choral compositions, hymns, and liturgical pieces are published by eight major domestic publishing houses (Augsburg Fortress, Boosey & Hawkes, Colla Voce, E.C. Schirmer, GIA, Kjos, MorningStar, Santa Barbara) and by Gehrmans Musikförlag in Sweden. Compositional honors include awards from the American Composers Forum, the American Harp Society, The American Prize, the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, ASCAP, the Bach Choir (UK), The Hymn Society, and North Dakota State University.

His research and writing has been published in the Choral Journal, the Bulletin for the Council on Research in Music Education, CrossAccent, The Hymn, and TRIAD.  He compiled and edited the Augsburg Motet Book (2013), the Augsburg Chorale Book (2017), and co-edited With a Voice of Singing: Essays on Children, Choirs, and Music in the Church, a Festschrift in honor of Ronald A. Nelson. Zebulon also contributed to the fourth and fifth volumes of Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir and is a frequent contributor to the Sundays & Seasons and Prelude Music Planner worship resources.

A native of Ohio, Zebulon studied music education at Ohio State University, graduating magna cum laude and with departmental distinction. He earned the Master of Sacred Music from Luther Seminary with St. Olaf College, and the Doctor of Musical Arts from Michigan State University, where he was a recipient of both the Charles K. Smith Fellowship in Choral Conducting and the Robert A. Harris Award for Excellence in Choral Performance. His primary teachers include Hilary Apfelstadt, Anton Armstrong, James Gallagher, David Rayl, Jonathan Reed, Robert Scholz, and Sandra Snow (conducting); David Cherwien and Ronald A. Nelson (composition); and John Ferguson and Paul Westermeyer (church music). Zebulon is an ordained deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.