A. Royce Eckhardt

Royce Eckhardt has served as a director of music, organist, conductor, composer, arranger, hymnal editor, teacher, and hymnologist for over fifty years. He has served Evangelical Covenant churches as minister of music and organist in Seattle, New Britain (CT), Winnetka, and Hinsdale, Illinois, and also the Winnetka Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Eckhardt earned a Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance in 1960 from North Park College, Chicago, and a Master of Music degree in liturgical music at Hartt College of Music, University of Hartford in 1972. Royce joined the music faculty at Seattle Pacific College in 1961, teaching organ, music theory and literature courses and directing small choral ensembles. He served as adjunct professor of church music at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, specializing in hymnology and also serving as chapel
organist.

Mr. Eckhardt was a member of the Covenant Hymnal Commission that produced The Covenant Hymnal (1973). In 1990 he was appointed to the Special Hymnal Commission that compiled and published The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook (1996), serving as music editor. He is represented in the hymnal with 47 arrangements, original tunes, and descants. His many hymn arrangements, harmonizations and tunes appear in eight American hymnals.

Royce also served as music director of the Covenant Ministers Chorus from 1985 to 2005, leading the Chorus on a concert tour to Sweden and Germany in 1990 and on a second concert tour in 2001 to Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Germany. He has led many workshops and seminars throughout the country on worship and church music related topics, is a published composer of organ and choral works, a board member of North Shore American Guild of Organists, board member of The Bach Week Festival, and a member of The Hymn Society.

Royce Eckhardt