A St. Joseph music teacher is taking home an award for the arts.

Frank D. Thomas is the choral music educator and director for the St. Joseph Community Chorus. He is being awarded the 2015 Missouri Arts Award.

According to the Allied Arts Council Thomas had worked hard to instill his love of music into the college students he has taught, volunteer singers he directs and the audience.

Thomas has spent 38-years as a director of Choral activities at Missouri Western State University.

In 1980 Thomas founded the volunteer St. Joseph Community Chorus and directed the ensemble until he retired in 2009. As part of the chorus’s outreach, he directed the “History Alive Through Music” program at elementary schools. In 2013 his successor unexpectedly moved away, he came back to direct the chorus through 2015 until a replacement could be found.
He is an active member of Music Educators National Conference and the Missouri Music Educators Association, and has been vice president of the American Choral Directors Association. He has received many local and state awards, most recently the 2014 St. Joseph Allied Arts Council’s Mayor’s Award for Extraordinary Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Thomas will be presented with the 2015 Missouri Arts Award in the Capitol Rotunda in Jefferson City on February 11, 2015.