Donté Alexander Ford is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and serves the Wheaton College community as Assistant Professor of Music and Associate Chaplain for Worship Arts. He is an alumnus of Penn State University (BA), Southern Methodist University (MSM, MM, MDiv), and the University of Arizona (PhD) and is best described as a musician, minister, and scholar. At Wheaton, Donté teaches Principles in Music and Worship Ministry, coaches Chapel Bands, oversees the music and worship arts offerings in Chapel worship, and serves as the director of the Worship Arts Certificate.

Donté’s many musical talents have afforded him the opportunity to serve as guest clinician/conductor, lead pianist, opera chorister, resident percussionist, and Minister of Music. His musical activities also include composing (specifically focusing on arrangements of Christian hymns and Negro Spirituals), and in 2019 he won the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Bass Ensemble composer competition. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Sankofa Chorale, a multi-ethnic choral ensemble that preserves and perpetuates African American Choral music while performing that music alongside choral masterworks of the Western European choral canon.

A Christian minister, Donté is a gifted preacher, holding ordination and ministerial credentials in the Holiness-Pentecostal and Baptist traditions, respectively. Though a life-long Pentecostal, Donté is committed to the diversity of the body of Christ. As a scholar, Donté focuses his efforts on the history and preservation of Black American concert and popular music, church hymnody, congregational song, and the history, theology, and music of African American Pentecostalism. His scholarly work includes lectures on African American choral art forms and contributions to the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology and UM Discipleship Ministries’ History of Hymns.