Our Choir Director - Peter Schmitt

Peter Schmitt received church music training with Prof. Ritter (organ, composition), attended the conservatory in Frankfurt, where he took his first choir director's exam. This was followed by studies in school music, specialising in choral conducting piano and singing. He has worked and guest conducted with Eric Ericsson, Claudio Abbado and Uwe Gronostay.

He has been conducting amateur choirs for 35 years and has appeared regionally and internationally at festivals and competitions as a workshop leader and multiple prize winner.

As a teacher, he has taught all school levels from primary school to classes in the Hauptschule and Realschule to the Gymnasium. After 5 years at the Adolf Reichwein School in Pohlheim with a secondment to the local primary school (Limesschule Watzenborn-Steinberg), he now teaches music and English at the Liebig School in Giessen. For almost 20 years, he has built up the school choir, helped to establish the "extended music lessons" in grades 5-10 and taught several advanced music courses in the upper school.

Last but not least, the work with the Liebigschule's upper school choir was and is an essential point of his practical orientation: the 1st prize at the Hessian Choir Competition, performances of choral symphonic works (Mozart Requiem, Vivaldi's Magnificat and Gloria, Haydn's "Creation") and concert tours to Berlin, Munich, Lund/Sweden, Winchester/England and Pennsylvania/USA, among others, are important stations of his practical work as a school musician.

Peter Schmitt has been a teaching assistant at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen since April 2020.