playbill vip

Dennis E. Northway

Active musician, organ technician, teacher and author DENNIS NORTHWAY is the founding Artistic Director of the Handel Week Festival.  He is the co-author, with Stephen Schnurr, Jr., of the critically acclaimed Pipe Organs of Chicago and Pipe Organs of Chicago Volume Two. Dennis is Parish Musician at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Gig Harbor, Washington.   

As a recitalist, Dennis was heard at the 2009 and 2012 National Conventions of the Organ Historical Society; he was also featured by the Chicago Midwest Chapter of the Organ Historical Society to play a recital on the large 1927 W. W. Kimball Organ in First Baptist Congregational Church in Chicago. 

Dennis Northway holds three degrees, including a Doctorate in Choral Conducting from Northwestern University.. 

Active as a composer, Northway has more than two hundred works to his credit; his organ works are published by Belwin Mills.

As a conductor, Dr. Northway has wide ranging experience with a vast array of forces. He has conducted four year-olds as well as a Senior Chorus; he has worked with hundreds of singers in mass choirs and intimate chamber ensembles as well. Dennis was associated with the Chicago Children's Choir for a decade in a variety of capacities. 

Earlier in his career, Dennis taught middle school students for eight years. He was chorus master of the Owensboro, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra Chorus and director of Choral Activities at Kentucky Wesleyan College. He was chorus master and conductor at Light Opera Works and was music director at St. Patrick's High School in Chicago. In addition, Dr. Northway was the founder of Fleur de Lys, a professional chamber choir, originally dedicated to the music of the Romantic period, former artistic director of the Park Forest Singers, and conductor of the Lutheran Choir of Chicago.