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Lauren Fitzgerald/ Founder + Director
Originally from the East Coast, Lauren grew up in a musical family, surrounded by a wide variety of artistic influences. As a kid, she sang in school and community choirs, then in regional and all-state festivals in high school, and Boston University's In Achord a cappella group in college. After graduating summa cum laude from BU's University Professors Program, she worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer (Panama '03-'05), an environmental educator, a Girl Scout outreach specialist, and a Spanish teacher, always incorporating music as a means to educate, connect, and delight people. She began to see music as her most powerful tool for affecting the change she wished to see in the world, AND for infusing her own life with meaning and joy. She has experienced time and time again the energy that emerges when people come together to be vulnerable and create something beautiful, and she believes that it provides something essential that the human spirit craves. When she learned in 2009 that budgetary limitations were forcing many Portland schools to cut music education, she felt moved to create an affordable independent chorus for children. Her vision was of a program that would provide children with rich musical and interpersonal experiences that would benefit them all through life, while also being modern, relevant, and interesting to the community at large. A student of the Kodaly method, Lauren has earned certification in Levels I and II from Portland State University. She is also trained and certified in the First Steps in Music curriculum for elementary, pre-K, and infants. Outside of Shine, Lauren loves drinking tea, baking bread, reading good books and discussing them with her book club, and being a leader of her daughter's Girl Scout troop.
Ben Milstein/ Piano Accompanist
Ben Milstein is a Portland-based pianist, composer and teacher with a wide range of musical interests and experience. He currently maintains a studio of private piano students as well as a roster of students at Forte Music School in Bethany Village.
Ben has studied the Taubman Approach to piano since 1986 with Robert Durso (Co-Founder and Senior Director of the Golandsky Institute) as well as other faculty members of the Golandsky Institute. He holds an MFA in New Media Composition from the California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA), a BA in Composition from Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), and also studied at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.
Alexandra Geffel/ Drums + Percussion
Alexandra Geffel has a B.A. in classical percussion from Biola University. She performs regularly with her band The Cabin Project and various other musical projects and theater companies throughout Portland. Favorite shows she has performed have been West Side Story, Gypsy, Pete the Cat and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. As well as teaching music privately, Alexandra works at PHAME, a fine and performing arts academy serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and is an instructor with Girls Build, a non-profit organization that strives to inspire curiosity and confidence in girls through the world of building.