Westminster Choir College (WCC) is an historic conservatory of music, currently operating on the campus of Rider University, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

From 1926 to 1929, WCC was an independent school located in Dayton, Ohio; it was then moved to Ithaca, New York (1929–1932), before relocating to Princeton, New Jersey (1932–2020), for much of its operating history.

After a failed sale to Beijing-based[1] Kaiwen Education Technology (formerly Jiansu Zhongtai Steel Structure Company), a for-profit enterprise with numerous financial burdens of its own[2]—and owned solely by the Chinese government—Rider abandoned the Princeton campus and moved Westminster's programs to the University's main campus in Lawrenceville.

The first European tour took place in 1929 and was sponsored by Dayton philanthropist Katharine Houk Talbott and endorsed by Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra.

The dedication of the new campus was marked by a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor at the Princeton University Chapel with the Westminster Choir, soloists, and the Philadelphia Orchestra (conducted by Leopold Stokowski).

In 1934, a second European choir tour took place, lasting for nine weeks and highlighted by a live radio broadcast from Russia to the United States.

In 1957, under the auspices of the U.S. State Department Cultural Exchange Program, the choir undertook a five-month world tour, concertizing in 22 countries and covering 40,000 miles (64,000 km), appearing before approximately a quarter-million people.

Recognizing that the college could not continue in this path, Westminster was faced with two options—either find a larger university to merge with, or cease operations.

[8] The creation of Westminster College of the Arts sparked heated debate among administrators, students, alumni and faculty that highlighted the divide between Rider's Princeton and Lawrenceville campuses.

In 2005, Westminster unveiled an ambitious master plan calling for upgrades including a new building, the first to be created on the campus under Rider University's stewardship.

[11] The lack of a large concert venue was solved in 2013 when the State of New Jersey allotted $4.6 million to Rider University to be spent on new academic facilities for Westminster's campus.

Opened in 2014, the complex is named the Marion Buckelew Cullen Center in honor of the philanthropist who died in 2012 and made a $5 million bequest to Westminster Choir College.

In addition to the performance/rehearsal hall, the Cullen Center includes a large lobby, a green room, and three flexibly configured classrooms that accommodate a wide range of academic and choral uses.

To maximize the opportunities the project offers for enhancing The Playhouse itself, the college secured $1.5 million to upgrade this building that has played such an important role in Westminster's history.

On February 26, 2018, Rider announced its intention to sell Westminster to Kaiwen Education Technology (formerly Jiansu Zhongtai Steel Structure Company), a for-profit enterprise owned solely by the Chinese government.

This was also reported in a March 2018 Bloomberg Business News article which said that Beijing Kaiwen Education Technology Company had agreed to pay $40 million for the college.

[17] Westminster Choir College officially relocated to Rider's Lawrenceville campus in fall 2020, operating under remote instruction because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enrollment in on-ground programs, which had plummeted due to the move and the COVID-19 pandemic, began to regrow in Fall 2024 (online enrollments in Westminster's master's programs has remained strong), and students' complaints as to the suitability of Rider's facilities have been addressed through continued projects like new flooring and acoustical treatment for Gill Chapel, the renovation of the SRC Seminar Room as a rehearsal space for opera, and the creation of a music computer lab in the Fine Arts Building.

The Symphonic Choir, under the direction of Westminster's Director of Choral Activities, has sung at individual performances of large orchestral/choral works with professional orchestras conducted by Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Eugene Ormandy, William Steinberg, Leopold Stokowski, Charles Dutoit, Neville Marriner, Nicholas McGegan, Arturo Toscanini, and Bruno Walter, and such contemporary figures as Pierre Boulez, Mariss Jansons, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Zdeněk Mácal, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Robert Shaw, Zubin Mehta, Albert Wolff, and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.