A Professor Emeritus of Music and the former Director of Choral Activities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Dr. Abercrombie came to Amherst from Indiana University South Bend, succeeded Alan Harler as Director of the Madrigal Singers in 1974, and founded the University Chamber Choir in 1978. He was conductor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Symphony Orchestra for three seasons, as well as one of the founders and conductors of the Five College Orchestra, and a guest conductor of the UMass Wind Ensemble. Choirs under his direction have toured the Eastern Seaboard and in Europe.

Dr. Abercrombie is a noted conductor, clinician and workshop facilitator, with expertise in working with singers and students at all levels. He has worked extensively with individual school programs as consultant, and in local, district and all-state festivals, with choirs and orchestras. He has been Assistant Conductor and/or Chorus Director of the Johnstown (PA), Elkhart (IN) and Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestra Choruses. He has presented clinics at music educators’ conferences, as well as at state and division ACDA conferences, and has led various summer conducting workshops as leader and guest. He will be guest conductor at the Massachusetts ACDA Big Sing West, and for the 2016 New Hampshire All-State Chorus.

In the summer of 2006 he taught master classes in conducting at the Seventh Taipei International choral Festival. He has been guest teacher in two innovative summer conducting seminars: since 2012, in the UMass Amherst Summer Conducting institutes, and last summer in the University of Delaware Choral Academy in Aix-en-Provence, France. He has been invited to teach in both of these in summer, 2015.

Since leaving UMass, he has also continued to teach and conduct at the collegiate level. He has been guest conductor or lecturer at Amherst College, Boston University, Northeastern, University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Western New England University.

He continues to research new approaches in teaching and learning conducting, and was an observer at the 2011 Eric Ericson Masterclass in Haarlem, The Netherlands. He developed and chaired the conducting master classes of the ACDA Eastern Division conference in 2014, and will co-chair that event for 2016 in Boston.

He was a co-founder of the Children's Chorus of Springfield (MA) in 2007, and helped establish the International Federation of Choral Music’s program, Conductors Without Borders. He is Past-President of both the Massachusetts and Eastern Division ACDA.

Massachusetts ACDA named him Conductor of the year in 2007. Choral Arts New England presented him with their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, and he was named the Helen Kemp Award recipient of Eastern Division ACDA in 2014.

A native of Atlanta, GA, he began his college at Emory University, transferring to Westminster Choir College in his junior year, graduating from Westminster with B.M. and M.M. degrees. He studied there with Julius Herford and Nicholas Harsanyi. Study with Dr. Herford, Fiora Contino, and Don V Moses continued in his doctoral work at Indiana University, from which he graduated With Highest Honors in 1974.

He lives in Hadley, MA, with his wife Kayla Werlin, delighting in his large and widely-spread, but much-beloved family of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and fabulous in-laws.