Emilie Sweet Amrein, DMA
Choral Music Educator, Community. Music Practitioner, Scholar, and Activist
Short Biography
Emilie Amrein is Associate Professor of Music, Director of Choral Studies, and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of San Diego where she conducts the USD Choral Scholars and teaches courses on the intersection of music education and social justice movements, community music, and changemaking.
Emilie is the co-artistic director of Common Ground Voices / La Frontera, a bi-national community music project that aims to build relationships and understanding across political, demographic, and perceptual borders as an exercise of non-violence. She is the Executive Producer of The Choral Commons, a media platform that provides a space for singing communities to realize the liberatory potential of the ensemble as a site of radical imagining.
Emilie is coauthor of the forthcoming book, Empowering Song: Music Education from the Margins, to be published by Routledge in 2022. She contributed to Wisdom, Wit, and Will: Women Choral Conductors on Their Art, and to Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir (Vol. 2-3). As a speaker, she has presented her work for dozens of professional organizations, including the National Collegiate Choral Organization, Chorus America, the American Choral Director’s Association, the College Music Society, and the National Youth Leadership Council.
Selected Concert Programs
Portraits: Anne Frank & Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2020)
The USD Choral Leadership Collaboratory & Sacra/Profana
Crossings: Migration Music (2017)
USD Choral Scholars & Concert Choir with Peregrine Music
Selected Video Recordings
This video features the University of San Diego Choral Scholars, under the direction of Emilie Amrein, at their April 2022 performance at the San Diego Sings Festival at the Baker-Baum Concert Hall at Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla.
Repertoire: Trilo - Ale Moeller; Hands - Jocelyn Hagen (featuring soloists Julia McAtee and Jack Hemphill); and Fire - Katerina Gimon. Improvisations between pieces and choreography devised by the ensemble.
Videography: Daniel Rumley, Rumley Music and Audio Production.
Copyright 2022