Robert De Cormier was born in
Farmingdale,
New York, and grew up in
Poughkeepsie, New York. His father was a shop teacher of
French-Canadian heritage, and his mother was a
Swedish-born guitarist. De Cormier took up the trumpet at age 7, and continued while attending
Colby College in
Maine and the
University of New Mexico. His trumpet playing ended during
World War II, when a German mortar shell nearly severed his right wrist while his Army infantry unit was advancing toward the
Rhine River. While recovering at a hospital on
Staten Island, he began singing with the
CIO chorus, which was where he met and started a lifelong association with
Pete Seeger. Because of
McCarthyism, and the fact that he had joined the
Communist Party as a young man, De Cormier used the name Robert Corman as a pseudonym on many Harry Belafonte recordings. After the war, De Cormier attended and graduated from the
Juilliard School. He was the music teacher and chorus director at
Elisabeth Irwin High School on Charlton Street, New York City, part of the Little Red School House on
Bleecker Street,
New York City. It was there that he met and mentored
Mary Travers. He and his wife, actress and singer Louise De Cormier, collected and recorded
folk songs from the
Catskill Mountains of New York. He arranged the music in
The Weavers Songbook. He also arranged for Peter, Paul and Mary. Robert De Cormier has composed music for chorus as well as
ballet and
Broadway scores, but is perhaps most famous for his spiritual arrangements. . His ballet score ''Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder'' is in the active repertoire of the
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He has directed concerts and recordings for television specials, and was choral director for a television special and recording, starring
Jessye Norman and
Kathleen Battle, and conducted by
James Levine. De Cormier was the conductor and leader of
The Belafonte Folk Singers during most of its lifetime, from 1957 to 1965. He also headed The Robert De Cormier Singers, who performed extensively in the mid-1960s and then sporadically until the mid-1990s. Robert De Cormier was the music director and conductor of the New York Choral Society from 1970 to 1987 and was a music director emeritus. In 1993, De Cormier helped to found the
Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus, which he conducted until his retirement in 2014. He founded Counterpoint, a Vermont-based choral group, consisting of eleven members. He has conducted music for the operas
Der Kaiser von Atlantis and
Brundibár. He has also recorded several
Christmas albums with his choral group, The Robert De Cormier Singers. He was also music director at Elizabeth Irwin High School in New York City in the late 50's. De Cormier taught a class at
Saint Michael's College in
Colchester, Vermont, entitled "Songs of Resistance: Music in Struggle" in 2008. Recently, De Cormier conducted at the Vermont International Music Festival in the summer of 2009. In the winter of 2012, he directed the chorus at the Vermont High School Honors Music Festival, held at
Castleton State College. De Cormier died of
kidney failure in
Rutland,
Vermont, at the age of 95. ==Memberships and honors==