Mission
To provide quality musical performances for the benefit and enjoyment of the members of our local community and the community at large.
Staff
Steven Humphrey, Music Director
Music has been a part of Steven’s life since he began piano lessons at the age of seven. Picking up the French horn a few years later, he played in bands and orchestras throughout middle school and high school. As a pianist, he performed George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the high school band.
Following a summer at Interlochen, Steve attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, earning a BFA degree in piano performance in 1977. Moving to Seattle, he earned a Masters degree in Opera Production and Stage Direction at the University of Washington, helping to found the short-lived Evergreen Opera Theatre a year later. He also worked as a staff accompanist for Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. In 1984, Steven participated in the Arts Management Fellowship program at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., learning skills that he subsequently applied to arts management positions in Seattle and Southern California.
While in Pasadena, he transitioned to the private sector to support a growing family but continued to be active as an accompanist and music director. After moving to Sequim in 2012, he began working with Olympic Theatre Arts first as an accompanist, then as Musical Director for productions including First Date, Another Night Before Christmas, Quilters, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In 2023, Steve took over as Music Director for the Sequim Community Christmas Chorus. He’s delighted to be working with Peninsula Singers as well and looks forward to keeping choral music vibrant in our community.
Mark Johnson, Associate Music Director & Accompanist:
Growing up on various wildlife refuges in the western United States, Mark Johnson took his first music lesson at age 13 and was immediately smitten. Four years later he started a double major in piano and composition at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, ultimately graduating in piano performance with a minor in voice and continued further studies in piano at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
He spent three summers as a modern dance accompanist at the Interlochen summer music camp in Michigan and did freelance accompanying and singing during the 30 years he lived in San Francisco where he was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under Vance George, singing bass and alto. He sang in and accompanied the UC Berkeley Alumni Chorus, the San Francisco Lyric Opera and was the bass section leader at the Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco. He has played in the studios of many voice teachers, including Carol Castel of the New York Opera Workshop, making ends meet in various jobs in law firms, the National Labor Relations Board, as well as a couple of years as an apprentice seamster at a high-end soft interiors company in the San Francisco Design Center.
Mark moved to Port Angeles in 2016 to take care of his mother. He works for the North Olympic Library System and is the music director/pianist at Dungeness Valley Lutheran Church and has played for several churches on the Peninsula as well as working with Peninsula Singers, Sequim Community Christmas Chorus, Rainshadow Chorale, and the Port Angeles Symphony Chorus. He also wrote and performed incidental music for an Olympic Theater Arts’ Christmas show.
Leadership
Board of Directors:
- Laura Kaiser-Paré, President
- Dori Beachler, Treasurer
- Mark Johnson, Secretary
- RayDelle Kistler
- Karla Morgan
- Dave Ahlman
- Trent Pomeroy
- Karl Honoré
- Valerie Lape
- Steven Humphrey, Ex officio
Donating
Peninsula Singers seeks the support of the Olympic Peninsula communities we serve to help us meet our financial needs. Your donation would be greatly appreciated. We want to recognize your donation publicly, and we will acknowledge your generosity on our website and on our concert programs. We are a registered 501(c)(3) organization.
Your contribution helps us in many ways.
- Music rental or purchase
- Insurance and hall rental for performances
- Printing Fall brochures to announce our concerts
- Printing programs for each concert
- Sponsoring a scholarship program
Did you know
If you contribute as little as $25.00 per year you become a supporting member of Peninsula Singers?
History
Peninsula Singers began in 1988 as a chamber group called Peninsula Chamber Singers. Dennis Crabbe, Director of Music at Peninsula College, started the group and in 1990, Dewey Ehling took over as conductor and has directed for the past 17 years. In 2005, the name was changed to Peninsula Singers to reflect the larger and growing size of the chorale. Though the group started as a chamber group it has expanded its size in order to do large choral works with orchestra. It retains its chamber concept, however, and will occasionally feature a chamber group in concerts.
The singers are made up of experienced singers from the North Olympic Peninsula. Many have had college experience, some professional. A few are music majors. The goal of all is to sing the best choral literature available. While we have mostly post-college singers, we do include a few younger inexperienced singers who have shown vocal promise and the desire to gain experience and familiarity with the repertoire.
Among the hundreds of works performed in the past years are:
Bach: Magnificat, St. Matthew Passion
Beethoven: Mass in C
Brahms: Shicksalslied
Brubeck: La Fiesta de la Posada
Durufle: Requiem Mass
Faure: Requiem Mass
Gounod: St Cecilia Mass
Handel: Messiah
Haydn: Nelson Mass
Mozart: Requiem Mass, Grand Mass, Solemn Vespers
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Schubert: Mass in G
Randall Thompson: Frostiana
Rutter: Requiem
Vivaldi: Gloria
Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem
and much more!
We have done selections from major musical productions such as Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats, and several full-length productions of Menotti’s Amal and the Night Visitors in full costume and staging. In addition we have performed many art, folk and gospel works by various composers.
We are still growing! We will continue to perform the finest choral work by classic and contemporary composers of all persuasions for all audiences.