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Long-Time Choir Director Retires from Paducah Tilghman High School

www.paducah.k12.ky.us

This month marks the end of an era for the choral program at Paducah Tilghman High School.  Long-time choir director and teacher Art Deweese is retiring after 22 years in the classroom.  

During his tenure, Deweese has shaped an award-winning choral program; his students have performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall and even sung masses at St. Mark’s in Venice as well as the Vatican.  The Grand Rivers native has also guided high school students to professional caliber vocal performances in three recent musicals at PTHS, Les Miserables, Jekyll and Hyde, and Fiddler on the Roof. Todd Hatton went to Paducah Tilghman one sunny afternoon to speak to Art Deweese, a man who’s become something of a tradition himself, about his career, and his future. 

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.
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