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Think Choral, Shop Local! Commissioning in your Community
Aubrey Patterson & Stacey Philipps: Oregon Repertory Youth Choir
Session Description
Description: Working with a local composer creates meaningful, relevant, engaging, personal experiences for singers, builds community beyond the choir, exposes singers to creatives working in their own town, and can offer unique, collaborative musical experiences. This encounter choir session will demonstrate the breadth of projects Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir and composer-in-residence Stacey Philipps have created over the last two seasons while rebuilding the choirs. This session will also give practical advice on finding local composers and commissioning everything from the simplest song to extended, rich, long-term projects. This will include the nuts and bolts of contracts, deposits, and deadlines. Hear examples while learning how to harness the strengths and skills in your own community to bring inspiration, innovation, and impact to your choirs.
Ensemble Bio
The ORS Youth Choir serves over 160 young singers in three locations (Inner SE Portland, Beaverton, and Vancouver) with a growing staff of passionate educators. We meet singers in their communities, providing music education, literacy skills, and mountaintop musical experiences. Artistic Director Aubrey Patterson actively partners with area school programs as a choir clinician and sight reading specialist. Is your area right for our next satellite? Learn more and join our movement at www.orsingers.org/youth-choir
Presenter/Conductor Bio
Aubrey Patterson (she/her) taught for twelve years as a director of choirs in Oregon public high schools. She is currently the Artistic Director for the Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir in Portland, as well as the director of Voces Auream at Lewis and Clark. Patterson’s Oregon high school programs have earned five state championships. Patterson enjoys adjudicating, clinician work, and premiering new and commissioned works with her ensembles. She enjoys the outdoors, being in water in any capacity, and adventures with her partner Nathan, goldendoodle Zoey Jane, and new addition Silas William.
Stacey Philipps writes music to share the thrill of creation, collaboration, and performance influenced by modal harmonies, folk songs, hymns, shape note music, and the melodic and rhythmic elements of the world around her. This “…rising star,” (Oregon Arts Watch) is one of “…Portland’s most forward-thinking composers,” (Willamette Week) who is “…establishing a new normal of what will someday be called early 21st-century classical music” (Oregon Arts Watch). Philipps is a multi-instrumentalist and lifelong singer currently in the alto section of the Oregon Repertory Singers and the Composer-in-Residence for the Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir. Her music for choirs, chamber ensembles, soloists, and orchestras has been performed across North America and she’s the proprietor of Sirensong Publishing, the primary distributor of her work at www.staceyphilipps.com.