Campus memorial emerges for Ron Shirey

Ron Shirey, professor of choral music at TCU since 1976, passed away Saturday in Fort Worth. His choirs traveled and performed in Europe, Asia and Mexico, including the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City with the National Symphony of Mexico and Maestro Herrera de la Fuente, where they performed Mozart’s Requiem, Prokofieff’s Alexander Nevky, and Poulenc’s Stabat Mater.

They also were popular performers at New York's Carnegie Hall and were featured multiple times at the annual convention of American Chorale Directors Association and Texas Music Educators Association.

"We have lost a colleague of very great stature and a friend who transcended conventional boundaries," Provost Nowell Donovan wrote in a campus email this morning. "Ron’s impact on our shared university culture was extraordinary and he is to a large degree irreplaceable. We shall all miss the extra zip that he and his choirs brought to the music of Convocation, the pride that we felt when his choirs and our students performed at Carnegie Hall, and the inspiration that we drew from his baton as he led us all through Verdi’s Requiem at Bass Hall."

With chalk-written messages, flowers, sheet music and more, a memorial created by students and faculty emerged over the weekend and into Monday at his reserved parking space on the north side of campus next to the Landreth Auditorium box office.

Shirey was also an active member in music beyond the campus. He served as chorus director for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 1993. He conducted both the Chorus and DSO. Haydn was among his all-time favorites. He worked with well-known conductors Robert Shaw, Eduardo Mata, John Nelson and Jerzy Semkow.