Arts Engage International is dedicated to bringing people together through the performing arts.
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Whether music, dance or other mediums, individual performers, teachers, conductors, or entire ensembles come together to build bridges of understanding and friendship. Connecting children through the arts is a particular focus of AEI and the company has successfully facilitated shared experiences throughout Europe, North America, and beyond. In recent years, numerous projects have been focused in Puerto Rico to support arts communities that have been devastated by natural disasters. AEI selects local operators to coordinate with international travel companies for the purpose of creating superior exchange experiences across the globe. Local performing groups are invited to share workshops and performances with the hope of generating deeper appreciation and understanding between performers and audiences alike. Funds are often donated to local ensembles or charities through these artistic exchanges.
Kevin Meidl is founder and president of Arts Engage International, a mission-driven organization focused on building bridges of cultural friendship and understanding through musical exchange and performance.
Kevin Meidl
Meidl co-founded the Badger State Girl Choir in partnership with the Valley Academy for the Arts in Neenah, Wisconsin. As conductor and artistic director of this ensemble, he leads elementary, middle and high school girls in a diverse performance-based program inclusive of both choral music performance and literacy.
In addition, he is the artistic director and principal conductor with the Appleton Boychoir, a treble choir of young boys currently celebrating their forty-second season. He is past director of choirs and music department chair at Appleton West High School and the Renaissance School for the Arts. He taught junior high school and high school choral music in Appleton for thirty-seven years. He is also past conductor of the Fox Valley Symphony Chorus, a 100 voice adult choir that performed an annually major works with the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra.
Meidl is Past President of the North Central Division of the American Choral Directors Association. In this position, he was responsible for the professional development of several thousand school, church, community and university conductors from across the upper Midwest. He served as a voting member of the national choral directors board, and is Past President of the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association.
Meidl’s choirs have performed for state division and national conferences of the American Guild of Organists, the Organization of American Kodály Educators, the Music Educators National Conference, the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the Intercollegiate Men’s Chorus Association, and the Wisconsin Music Teachers Association. They have performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Fox Valley Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, and for the official presidential visit of George W. Bush in Appleton. He has conducted choirs for ceremonies commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, for Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, and in some thirty-five other countries around the world. With the Badger State Girl Choir he made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut in April of 2014.
Meidl’s choirs have produced a dozen recordings and have been featured on national radio programs in the Netherlands, Russia, and Mexico. Graduates of his choir programs have entered the ranks of the music education profession and are creating choral music across the country. In the Appleton Public Schools alone there are four music educators who are graduates of his program. In addition, as a voice coach, he has trained singers, several of whom are professional opera and Broadway performers in the United States and Europe.
Meidl has studied conducting with Constantina Tsolainou, currently director of choral activities at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia; with Kate Tamarkin, music director of the Charlottesville and the University of Virginia Symphonies in Charlottesville, Virginia; and with Robert Harris and John Paynter at Northwestern University. He holds degrees from Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and the School of Music at Northwestern University. He received his doctoral degree in music education from Boston University.
As an adjudicator, conductor, clinician, and lecturer, Meidl is in high demand across the United States with events in Virginia, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota. He recently conducted the 1,000 voice South Dakota All-State Choir and the Wisconsin All-State Children’s Choir. He was a featured presenter at the National Music Educators Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, and was the keynote speaker for the Iowa Choral Directors Association Convention. In the summer of 2014 he was guest lecturer at North Dakota State University for their Music Educators Institute. He is widely published in professional journals across America. He is a contributing author in Brothers, Sing On! Conducting the Tenor-Bass Choir… released in July of 2014.
Internationally, Meidl is in demand as a teacher and conductor. Most recently he led masterclasses or conducted choirs in Peru, Estonia and China. A leader in international choral music education, Meidl created the International Youth Symposium on Choral Music in Altötting, Germany, and the national conference for high school students considering careers in choral music called NextDirection. He has developed various initiatives in support of music education in Wisconsin including confabs for choral directors, music repertoire banks, summer choir camps and the highly successful “Immersion Day” concept for divisional ACDA conferences. A recent initiative is the Summer School Consortium Choir Camps…entering its seventeenth year, this program has impacted over two-thousand children from thirteen school districts across the Fox River Valley.
Dr. Meidl is a member of the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, the International Federation for Choral Music, the Organization of American Kodály Educators, Pi Kappa Lambda, and past president of the Gamma Zeta Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. He was selected as Secondary Teacher of the Year in 1996 for the Appleton Area School District and most recently, in 2008, as the Helble high school Teacher of the Year. His biography is listed in recent editions of Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, Who’s Who in the Midwest, Who’s Who in American Education, and several other honorary publications. In 2015 he was nominated for the position of National President of the American Choral Directors Association. In the spring of 2020 he was honored to conduct the Appleton Boychoir at Milwaukee’s Marcus Center for the Performing Arts as part of their Central-North Central ACDA double regional conference.