Portland Community Choral Summit
By Fletcher Lanning
Vocal Summit, part of the Portland, OR chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, spread the good news of harmony by hosting a unique festival aimed at community choral organizations in the Northwest. Justin Miller, Musical Director of Vocal Summit, previously of multi-time International Champions Westminster Chorus, has been directing community choral organizations for over two decades, but it was his 15 years as a high school music educator that helped him see the opportunity to bring something new to his community. “In high school, and to a lesser extent in college, there exist a lot of opportunities for young singers to travel to festivals to perform, receive high-quality feedback, and hear what other groups are bringing to the stage,” says Miller. “That ecosystem just doesn’t exist for adult singers.” The pitch: Bring together community choral arts organizations from around the Portland area to sing for each other, receive expert feedback, and build an energetic community to help support Portland choral arts for years to come!
Matt Erickson, President of Vocal Summit and lead organizer of the festival, launched the project with the primary goal of building relationships within the Portland choral community. Erickson is a longtime choral singer who also sings with Cantico Singers, a chamber chorale that participated in the event. “This festival truly embodied a spirit of collaboration” and “provided a unique opportunity for choirs to benefit from the insightful feedback and instruction of our amazing clinician, Jason Sabino.” Jason is a respected professional clinician and Artistic Director of the Oregon Chorale, an 80-voice symphonic choir and well-established force in the Portland, OR arts scene. “Overall, the festival has received a lot of positive feedback” and left “everyone inspired and eager to hear about future gatherings.”
As a growing chorus and aspiring community arts organization, Vocal Summit is always looking for ways to be more involved in the local arts scene. Though this idea had been mentioned as a long-term project early in the chorus’s history, work on the festival didn’t begin in earnest until February of 2024. Looking at the performance calendar and knowing the seasonal cycles of many choral groups, May seemed like the perfect place to plant a flag. Vocal Summit needed a place to grow from and didn’t want to wait a whole cycle to get started. The chorus immediately got to work finding a venue and crafting a letter to introduce themselves and this project to the community. The response was strong, and though not every group had enough planning time to be involved in the first year, there were enough participants to fill the space with song—and a growing number who hope to be involved next year.
In the Barbershop world, we know the value of building relationships beyond the stage. We know that creating new ways to connect with our community is a critical step in bringing new voices into our traditions. To grow our society and preserve this truly American art form we must find methods of recruitment that stretch beyond nostalgia. Events like the Portland Community Choral Summit create opportunities to share our unique musical perspective while integrating with the powerful tradition of choral singing in America. If you speak with other barbershoppers, you’ll hear countless variations of how folks found the hobby, and no two stories are exactly alike. If we want to hear new stories in years to come, we must create those opportunities today.
Our culture has entered what feels like an unprecedented period of retreat from community. Multiple studies show an increase in reports of loneliness. Many of the traditional places to share space and collaborate with others are either disappearing or have become politicized in a way that creates more division than connection. Choral singing has the power to reverse this trend. Singing with others has been shown to have a multitude of benefits for the individual, such as a reduction in stress hormones and an increase in the proteins and enzymes that keep us healthy. Being expressive and emoting as a group also promotes social cohesion and harmony at a time when group connections are scarce.
Those who participate in choral singing consistently show much higher levels of civic engagement, charitable giving/volunteering, and social connection at all ages. Choruses bring together folks from a wide variety of backgrounds, differing by age, income, and social affiliation to a degree that few other social groups or hobbies can match. One in six U.S. adults participate in some form of choral group, and finding new and innovative ways to connect with those 50+ million people, many of whom may not have heard of Barbershop beyond a local production of the Music Man, can only benefit us and strengthen our place within the musical history of America.
If anyone is interested in finding out how your chapter can host a similar event we would be happy to share any information that would be helpful. Feel free to contact Matt Erickson: matthewerickson19@gmail.com