A church musician since the age of 12, David Sievers, our Pastoral Associate of Music and Liturgy, has performed at three National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM) National Conference as a member of the National Catholic Honors Choir, and in 1998, sang as a guest soloist with the Carolina Catholic Chorale at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II. In the summer of 2021, he gave two presentations ("Teaching Instrumentalists to Sing" - which was listed as one of the top 5 sessions of the convention -  and "Voice Technique 101: The semantics of singing") at the NPM National Conference in New Orleans. His article, "The Semantics of Singing," based on his two presentations, was published in The Liturgical Singer in late 2021.

Prior to coming to St. Luke, Dr. Sievers served as Music Director at St. Rose of Lima Parish (Franklin, IN) and St. Joseph’s Parish (Kennewick, WA). He earned the Doctor of Music degree in Voice Performance and Literature from the famed Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he studied with Paul Kiesgen and renowned Heldentenor Gary Lakes. He also earned  degrees from Washington State University (B.M., Voice Performance, summa cum laude) and Boise State University (M.M., Voice Performance and Pedagogy).

Dr. Sievers is also a Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Dayton. At UD, he teaches private voice, English and German diction and literature for singers, voice pedagogy, and other related courses, including a course on the intersection of faith traditions and music. Dr. Sievers is the first applied music faculty member to teach for the UD Core Program, an intensive, interdisciplinary curriculum. His students have appeared on Broadway (Rock of Ages, Spider Man: Turn off the Dark, Groundhog Day), sung in professional choruses like Conspirare, Cantus, and Anuna, and are working professionally around the country as successful music therapists, educators, and recording artists and performers in genres ranging from opera to country blues to indy pop.

He also is co-music director and conductor of the UD Opera Workshop where, in the spring of 2018, he conducted the world premiere of Spectacle, a musical by Nick Cardilino on the story of the founding of the Marianist order, a work that Sievers also served as arranger. The 2022-2023 school year will see him at the baton for the devised work Dunbar in Love and Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. In the past, he has directed or conducted such works as The Sound of Music, UD Through the Looking Glass and What you Found There, The Magic Flute, Babes in Toyland, Grease, Die Fledermaus, Once Upon a Mattress, Gianni Schicchi, The Pirates of Penzance, The Stoned Guest, Oedipus Tex, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Smoke on the Mountain, Urinetown, several musicals with the UD Children's Theater, and recently served as music director for the devised works (ir)reconcilable: faith and reason and sustenance.  He also taught in Leipzig, Germany as part of a UD Summer Study Abroad program ("Faith, Music and Human Rights in Eastern Germany") in 2008, 2010, and 2013.

An active tenor, he has performed in recital in Italy and Germany, in the Midwest and in the Pacific Northwest, and has appeared on the stages of the Levitt Pavilion, Dayton Opera, Epiphany Lutheran Players, St. George's Episcopal Church (Kettering), First Baptist Church of Kettering, Central State University, Dayton Art Institute, the UD Opera Theater, IU Opera Theater, Bloomington Music Works, the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, Spokane Opera, Washington East Opera, and Richland Light Opera. He has sung many of the character tenor roles in the operatic canon, and is equally comfortable in musical theater, with roles ranging from Dr. Caius (Falstaff) and King Kaspar (Amahl and the Night Visitors) to Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Guys and Dolls) and Archibald Craven (The Secret Garden). He has been the tenor soloist for symphonic works including Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, Haydn's The Creation, Rachmaninoff's Vespers, and Adolphus Hailstork's cantata I will lift up mine eyes. He has sung with the Piqua Civic Band, the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra, Wittenberg University, the UD Chorale and Choral Union, the Springfield Symphony, the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, the Boise Master Chorale and the Mid-Columbia Oratorio Chorus.

Dr. Sievers is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the New York Singing Teachers Association, the National Federation of Music Clubs (and serves as the Opera Division Chair for the state of Ohio), the Dayton Music Club, the Opera Guild of Dayton (where he is a member of the Board of Directors and the chair of the High School Vocal Competition), the American Choral Directors Association, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, the National Opera Association (where he was recently put on the Sacred in Opera Initiative Task Force), and Phi Beta Kappa. He also served as a member of the Archdiocesan Music Committee for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati during the transition of the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal.
 

Recent engagements include "David Sievers and Friends present An Afternoon at the Opera" for the Dayton Music Club, a recital built around the mythology of superheroes (and villians!) entitled "Gods and Heroes" and participating in a living museum, singing songs with texts by noted Dayton native poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Often a performer and proponent of new music, Dr. Sievers has performed the works of Jake Heggie, Joseph Summer, and Libby Larsen with the composers present, and performed the world premiere of "When You Are Old and Gray" by Lucy Simon, the composer of the Broadway hit The Secret Garden, who personally coached him in the leading role of Archibald Craven.

Upcoming performances include Robert Schumann's Spanisches Liederspiel with members of the UD music faculty, and voice faculty recital featuring texts of Paul Laurence Dunbar, where he will sing the challenging 4 Romantic Love Songs by Adolphus Hailstork. On occasion, you may see him sing the National Anthem for the Dayton Dragons or the University of Dayton basketball games.

A self-professed "nerdist," in his rare spare time Dr. Sievers enjoys reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, going for long walks (don't be surprised if you see him conducting while he walks!), watching TV genres from period pieces to fantasy epics to cheesy sitcoms, building Lego villages (Christmas, Halloween, and "NewGothamopolis York"), cooking (gluten-free, of course!), and playing with his rescue kitty, Luciano T'Challa, who loves playing Kittyzilla in the Lego villages.