Artistic Director Rebecca Parsons
Rebecca Parsons is a choral director, composer, and pianist from Vancouver, Canada, who’s driven by a desire to cultivate thoughtful, collaborative, humanizing communities through great music. She’s currently completing her master’s degree in Choral Conducting at PSU, where she directs the Portland State Rose Choir and University Choir.
Before she moved to Portland, Rebecca devoted much of her career to community choirs for social change and accessibility through El Sistema and local organizations for adults with disabilities. In her years singing and working with Kokopelli Choirs in Edmonton, Alberta, Rebecca enjoyed regular collaboration with the University of Pretoria Youth Choir in South Africa, and toured Canada with the State House Girls Choir from Nairobi, Kenya, from which she developed a passion for oral traditions of music and for cross-cultural collaboration rooted in friendship and mutual respect.
As a composer, Rebecca is a regular collaborator with Canadian National Slam Poetry Champion Brandon Wint, with whom she’s had the pleasure of recording multiple albums, creating multimedia live shows, and publishing choral repertoire.
She is thankful to be here.
Artistic Director Emerita Joan Szymko
Bio coming soon…
Accompanist
Ian’s Bio
Ian McCarty works full-time in the field of music as a professional jazz and classical accompanist, educator, composer, musical director, and producer. Ian studied classical piano performance with Dr. Alexander Tutunov and holds his B.A. in Music from Southern Oregon University. In addition to accompanying the Aurora Chorus, Ian works at Cedarwood and Portland Waldorf schools as their collaborative pianist, and teaches piano at the Portland Piano Lab. You can find him at various jazz jams around town, as well as performing with his jazz trio.