Faculty Profiles

photo of tony payne, professor in conservatory of music

Tony Payne, D.M.

Associate Professor of Music, Director of Special Programs and Artist Series

On Faculty since 1983
630.752.5599
Armerding 216

tony.l.payne@wheaton.edu

Dr. Tony Payne has served numerous roles at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music for nearly 40 years, most notably as General Manager of the Wheaton College Artist Series. He is also a member of the music faculty and Director of Arts Events Management. He holds degrees in music composition from Wheaton College, Bowling Green State University, and Northwestern University.

Recent choral works include an anniversary anthem, Sing, All Creation for Salem United Church of Christ,  I Thirst, for Holy Week at St. Paul Lutheran Church, and Great Physician, Tend, composed to commemorate the global pandemic. He has composed over 100 hymns for worship. His historical song cycles include Departures: Four Songs on Texts by Malcolm Muggeridge, Lincoln’s Farewell: Four Songs, and The Last Words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

Dr. Payne has had an active performing career on piano and organ in service to local churches, most recently as organist at Wheaton Bible Church.

Northwestern University
D.M., Music Composition, 1983

Bowling Green State University
M.M., Music Composition, 1981

Wheaton College
B.M., Music Composition, 1979

  • Community outreach
  • Composition
  • Music
  • Fundraising

Wheaton College Artist Series offers fresh, exciting concerts for 2016-17 season
Daily Herald online

Tony Payne wants you to get up from the couch, turn off the TV and try a night out doing something new: attending a Wheaton College Artist Series concert.

"You can see anything online, you can hear anything online, but it's not the same thing as listening to it up close and personal," he said.

Payne, who serves as general manager of the artist series, said the set of five performances that will take place in Edman Chapel throughout late 2016 and early 2017 are mostly classical music, mixed with a little bit of jazz, pop, folk, sacred music and dance...

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Want to build interfaith friendships? Here's how music can help
Deseret News online

"It goes back to the Christian scripture. There are references in the Old Testament — most pointedly in the Psalms — about not only singing to the Lord, but singing a new song to the Lord," said Tony Payne, a composer who leads local and global programs for undergraduate music majors at Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois. "In the New Testament, you have the apostle Paul referencing singing to one another with psalms and hymns and other spiritual songs."...

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