Audition materials available on November 1, 2021 

• • Audition materials will be posted here

  • Audition payment, coming soon

High School Choir Committee

Chair

Jennifer Tibben

jtibben@washoeschools.net

Co-chair

Andrew Sonnemaker

asonnemaker@carson.k12.nv.us

Guest Conductor

Giselle Wyers is the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor of Choral Music at the University of Washington, where she conducts the award-winning University Chorale and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in choral conducting and music education. University Chorale’s latest CD, Resonant Streams (on the MSR Music Recordings label) received recognition by Gramophone magazine last spring. Her semi-professional chorus, Solaris Vocal Ensemble, specializes in the performance of contemporary American choral literature. Their premiere album Floodsongs on the Albany Music label, won the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music in 2017-18.

As a guest conductor, Wyers has led high school honor choirs and all-state choruses in New York (Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center), Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, Connecticut, Nebraska, Texas, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and Vancouver, Canada. She has conducted semi-professional ensembles across the United States and in Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, and Sweden. Wyers is in demand for Zoom lectures during the pandemic with Res Diversa Chamber Choir (Chile), Western Washington University (a three-week composition crash course), University of Iowa, Northern Illinois University, Montana State University, and with the Mastersingers of Milwaukee (Wisconsin). Her appearance with Kansas and Nevada All-States will take place during the 2020-21 academic year.

Wyers is a leading national figure in the application of Laban movement theory for conductors. She has served as guest lecturer in conducting at Sweden’s Örebro Universitet, European Festival of Church Music (Germany), Latvian Academy of Music, Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, Westminster Choir College, University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Portland State University.

Wyers’ choral works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing Company as part of the “Giselle Wyers Choral Series,” and have been performed across the United States, South America, Canada, Australia, Cuba, and numerous European cities. Her latest premiere was a 30-minute choral cycle entitled And All Shall Be Well, commissioned by the Vashon Island Chorale. In 2020, four new choral works will premiere across the United States. She is also committed to mentoring scholar-writers in the field, and serves on the editorial board of ACDA’s Choral Journal.

Nomination process coming soon!

Deadlines to know:

• TBA

Chairpersons

Briana Valley

bvalley@carson.k12.nv.us

Heather Scobie

scobihr@nv.ccsd.net

John DiPalo

dipalja@nv.ccsd.net

Guest Conductor

Vincent Oakes is in his seventeenth year as Artistic Director of the Chattanooga Boys Choir, a music education and performance organization founded in 1954 which now includes over 120 choristers ages 8‐18 in five ensembles. Including innovative performance opportunities and collaborative community initiatives, the CBC maintains a performance calendar of thirty appearances annually, as well as a technology‐based music education and choral musicianship curriculum for its participants. The choir has performed and toured extensively under Mr. Oakes’ direction, including performance tours to Europe, Canada, and Cuba, as well as significant domestic appearances at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, St. Louis Cathedral Duke University Chapel, and Carnegie Hall. The CBC represented the United States at the Festival Internacional de Coros por la Paz in Costa Rica in June 2019. Recording opportunities for the CBC have included commercially‐released recordings with Stephen Curtis Chapman, Casting Crowns, and the GRAMMY‐ nominated NAXOS recording of L’enfant et les sortilèges by Maurice Ravel with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2006, Mr. Oakes has also been the Director of Choral Music at The Baylor School, a grade 6‐12 independent day and boarding college preparatory school in Chattanooga. Under his direction, the choral program has more than tripled in size to include over 200 participants in four student choirs and a faculty choir. He was awarded Baylor’s Glenn Ireland Chair for Distinguished Teaching in 2015 and appointed Chair of Baylor’s Department of Fine & Performing Arts in 2019.

His professional involvement and leadership in the American Choral Directors Association has included service to the Tennessee chapter as newsletter editor, webmaster, state conference chair, and President (2013‐2015). He has been an active contributor to ACDA’s Southern Region serving as Repertoire & Standards Chair for Boychoirs (2006‐2012), High School Honor Choir Chair (2010,

2012), and Conference Local Arrangements (2016), as well as an interest session presenter on the topics of the changing male voice and teaching choral literacy and musicianship in the choral rehearsal. In 2012, he was selected as one of seven conductors representing the United States at the inaugural ACDA International Conductor Exchange Program in Cuba and, in July 2019, he started his service as President to ACDA’s eleven‐state Southern Region.

As a conductor/clinician, Oakes has conducted numerous honor choirs and festivals throughout the United States, including recent ACDA honor choirs in Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota, Nevada, and Florida, as well as regional honor choirs in ACDA’s Western and North Central divisions. Additional recent conducting engagements have included the Bangkok International Choral Festival, the North Carolina Summer Institute for Choral Arts, and the VOCALIZZE Choral Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. A lifelong advocate for music in worship, he has served churches in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee and as a clinician/conductor for children and youth choirs at Lake Junaluska, Massanetta Springs, and Montreat church music conferences.

Mr. Oakes earned the Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Florida and the Master of Sacred Music degree in Choral Conducting from Emory University. He has contributed articles to Choral Journal and a chapter in the textbook Choral Pedagogy (3rd edition) by Robert Sataloff and Brenda Smith. An advocate for choral and community partnerships, Mr. Oakes has founded several initiatives in the Tennessee Valley region, including the Only Men Aloud! Men’s Chorus festival, a biennial ecumenical community hymn festival and the SafetySing music project for preschool‐aged children. In 2014, he started the Tennessee Valley Voices, a choir comprised of Tennessee Valley‐area arts teachers to raise awareness of the importance of music and arts education.