Dennis Davenport

Professor
Department of Music

Dennis Davenport is Professor of Music at Otterbein. Current teaching includes Musical Theatre History, directing the Otterbein Singers and teaching in the First Year Experience program. With colleague Jim Bates, Dennis leads the Vienna Travel Course in May Term. His recent music direction for Theatre & Dance production program includes The Pajama Game in Fall 2021, and The All Night Strut, The Fantasticks and Little Shop of Horrors for Otterbein Summer Theatre. For Otterbein Opera Theatre, Dennis has music directed Cox and Box, La Serva Padrona, The Gift of the Magi (David Conte) and The Life and Love of Joe Coogan (Paul Salerni). Dennis has composed music for two one-act operas to libretti by his spouse Sarah Davenport under the collective title “First Encounters”: Isak Dinesen Meets Marilyn Monroe, and Berthe Morisot Meets Edouard Manet. Both works have been produced by Otterbein Opera Theatre. The final work in the trilogy, Cole Porter Meets Rodgers & Hart, will take shape during a sabbatical in Spring 2022. Other original work includes scores for Brecht’s Galileo at the University of Michigan Residential College, and for Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle at Otterbein.

Dennis also serves as Music Director at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and University Center on the OSU campus.