Kathy Briggs has been teaching in public and private schools since 1998. She started her teaching career in public schools in rural Minnesota, where she taught elementary music and high school choir for eight years. In 2006, she moved to Portland, Oregon where she leads the award-winning choir program at St. Mary’s Academy. Ms. Briggs also conducted the University of Portland’s Bel Canto from 2014 – 2023. Her expertise is treble choirs and treble choir literature, along with the use of movement in the choral rehearsal.
Ms. Briggs earned her BA in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MA in Music Education/Choral Conducting from the University of St. Thomas. She has earned numerous awards and recognition for her teaching, including the 2024 OMEA Outstanding Music Educator Award and the 2016 Oregon ACDA Podium Award for Excellence in the Choral Arts. Her research has been published in the ACDA Choral Journal, she has authored and published general music lesson plans for VH1 and NAfME, and she has been a clinician at both state and regional NAfME conferences. Ms. Briggs’s choirs have won numerous awards and recognition in the Pacific Northwest, including a performance at the 2022 OMEA State Conference, 2013 NAfME Northwest Conference, a performance at the 2018 Northwest ACDA Conference, and winning the 2015 OSAA State Choir Championship. Her students have toured in New York, Florida, Washington, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France and her choir was invited twice to perform for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and their guests in the White House (2012, 2013).
Ms. Briggs is a third-generation educator – both of her parents were public school teachers and her grandfather was a high school band director. She was active in music from an early age and played the tuba in her rural Wisconsin high school band. She is a proud member of ACDA, NAfME, and OMEA, is honored to be a Past President of OMEA, currently serves as the Choral Chair on the OMEA and ACDA boards and is the OMEA State Student Composition Contest Chairperson. Ms. Briggs achieved her lifelong dream of meeting Julie Andrews in 2019.
Kathy Briggs
Choral Chair
St. Mary’s Academy
Portland, Oregon
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