Donn Weiss; UCLA Choral Director

Donn Weiss, internationally known choral director at UCLA for more than 35 years, died Monday of cancer. He was 70.

Weiss, respected for his choral arrangements as well as his conducting, died at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica, said his son and sole survivor, Craig Stanke.

At UCLA from 1959 until his retirement in the mid-1990s, Weiss followed Roger Wagner into the top director’s slot. He arranged music for choirs and directed campus singing groups in appearances around the world and on nationally televised variety shows such as “The Dinah Shore Show.” Weiss directed the first Super Bowl half-time show in 1967.

Weiss also was choral director for the Westwood Presbyterian Church until his illness forced him to step down a few weeks ago.

As a relative newcomer in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, Weiss organized and conducted the Don Weiss Chorale. The group specialized in contemporary choral compositions and made its debut in 1962 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater.

Among the UCLA groups that Weiss directed were the Men’s Glee Club, the Madrigal Singers, Choral Union and University Chorus. He was also known for conducting combined choirs in massive choral concerts around Southern California.

Times reviewer Robert Riley praised an ambitious joint choir concert conducted by Weiss in 1973 at UCLA’s Royce Hall, noting, “The long and imaginatively varied program came to life exceptionally well.”

Especially “memorable,” Riley wrote, was “the lovely ‘De Tierra Lejana Venimos,’ a traditional Puerto Rican selection, sung touchingly by the Madrigal Singers in an arrangement by Weiss.”

A musical memorial service is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday in Royce Hall.