Ellingboe, Bradley

Bradley Ellingboe is Director of Choral Activities at the University of New Mexico. He has led a wide-ranging career in the world of singing, including accomplishments as a choral conductor, soloist, composer, scholar, and teacher. As a choral conductor, he has led festival choruses in 40 states and 14 foreign countries. He made his operatic conducting debut in December 2011, leading the world premiere of Stephen Paulus’s opera Shoes for the Santo Niño in a joint production by the Santa Fe Opera and UNM. As a bass-baritone soloist, he has sung under such conductors as Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling, and Sir David Willcocks.

Ellingboe has over 130 pieces of music in print, including the Requiem for chorus and orchestra, which has been performed more than 300 times in this country and Europe, and his work, Star Song, which premiered in December of 2013. Star Song had its New York debut (Lincoln Center) in May of 2014, and its European debut in July of that year. For his scholarly work in making the songs of Edvard Grieg more accessible to the English-speaking public, he was knighted by the King of Norway in 1994. As a teacher, the University of New Mexico Alumni Association named him Faculty of the Year in 2008.

Bradley Ellingboe has been on the faculty of the University of New Mexico since 1985, where he is Professor of Music and Regents Lecturer. He has served as Chairman of the Department of Music. In the fall of 2005, Ellingboe stepped down from his post as Head of the Voice Area and assumed the title of Director of Choral Activities. He is a graduate of Saint Olaf College and the Eastman School of Music and has done further study at the Aspen Music Festival, the Bach Aria Festival, the University of Oslo and the Vatican.

Ellingboe has won annual awards for his choral compositions from ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Arrangers and Publishers since 2000. His choral music is widely sung and is published by Oxford, Augsburg, Walton, Hal Leonard, Mark Foster, Choristers Guild, Alliance, Concordia, and particularly the Kjos Music Company, for whom he edits two series of choral octavos. His music has been performed and recorded by such groups as the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Philip Brunelle’s VocalEssence, the Saint Olaf Choir, the Harvard Glee Club, Craig Hella Johnson’s Conspirare, and the choirs of the University of Michigan and Luther College, among many others.

He has prepared choirs for such luminaries as Dave Brubeck, Moses Hogan, Alice Parker, Morten Lauridsen, René Clausen, and Robert Ray. At the request of composer Libby Larsen the UNM Women’s Chorus, "Las Cantantes," recorded all Larsen’s music for treble chorus. He was asked to guest conduct the Santa Fe Desert Chorale in a series of concerts in December 2011.

An active church musician, Ellingboe was Director of Music at St. Paul Lutheran Church of Albuquerque from 1990-2009. He has given workshops for the AGO, PAM, ALCM, and NPM. He has been on the summer faculties of Saint Olaf College, Southern Methodist University and Montreat. He was a member of the national board of the Choristers Guild from 2004 – 2011.

Professor Ellingboe is the editor of Choral Music for Sundays and Seasons (2004), published by Augsburg Fortress Press. He is also editor of two books of songs by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg: 45 Songs of Edvard Grieg (1988) and A Grieg Song Anthology (1990) published by Leyerle Publications.