Portland State University Choirs

Appears on: Carmina Burana

Portland State University’s School of Music and Theater includes seven different choirs enrolling over 200 singers. Three of those choirs, The Rose Choir, Thorn Choir and Chamber Choir are featured in this weekend’s concerts. Classics Today calls The Portland State Chamber Choir “amongst the finest choirs in the world.” They are the only American choir to have won the Seghizzi International Competition for Choral Singing in Italy (2013) and the Bali International Choral Festival in Indonesia (2017). Their 2017 album The Doors of Heaven is the only album by a University chorus to hit #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart and their 2020 release Translations was named an Album of the Year by both Gramophone and Stereophile. In Summer of 2022, they became the first American choir to appear at a World Choral Exposition, and in July of 2023 they have been invited to sing Mass at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, Italy.

Named one of the 25 most influential artists in Portland by Willamette Week, Dr. Ethan Sperry is the Barre Stoll Professor of Choral Music at Portland State University, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Oregon Repertory Singers, and editor of the Global Rhythms series for earthsongs music, one of the best-selling choral series in the world. Choirs under his direction have performed at over a dozen ACDA and NAFME Conferences and have toured over twenty foreign countries. Sperry has been a frequent guest conductor for composer A. R. Rahman and serves as a consultant for the KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, the first classical music school in India, which opened in 2009.