Rex Benjamin Rund is Director of Music and Liturgy at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana, where he has served since 1997. There he oversees a thriving liturgical music program and conducts five choirs, including two children’s choirs.

Rex is a bit of a Renaissance man: born on a downstate Illinois pig farm, he then attended St. Meinrad Seminary, where he studied chant with Fr. Columba Kelly. He earned a B.Mus. in Music Education and an MA in Choral Conducting at Eastern Illinois University before serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Haiti, where he both worked in swine husbandry and directed a Haitian choir. Then followed seven years in Austria, where he taught both music and math, sang in the Salzburg Cathedral Choir, and served as a parish music director.

He has led three parish choir pilgrimages to Europe, conducting Masses in Salzburg, Assisi, Siena, Rome, Lourdes, Fátima, Santiago de Compostela, Burgos, and León. He has also served as a festival conductor and directed music for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM) national convention Mass. He is a past national Choir Director Section chair for NPM, and has served on the faculty at NPM’s national Choir Directors Institute. He has also been a presenter on numerous liturgical topics at conferences for NPM, ACDA, and Notre Dame.

In his extra-musical life, Rex is a 15-time marathoner, an avid gardener, a writer, a rabid Cubs fan, and most importantly, a devoted husband and father.