Camas Choir Records Live with Artist

A high school choir concert is usually a one-night thing. This one is being built like a record. Camas High School Choir is heading to Revolution Hall in Portland on May 9 to perform *Origins* with Portland artist E. Ellison — and the whole show is meant to become a live album. That changes the stakes fast. Students are not just singing for parents and classmates; they are making something meant to last. ### What is this project, exactly? *Origins* is a collaboration between E. Ellison and the Camas High School Choir, led by director Ethan Chessin. The public setup is unusually specific: this is a live album recording, not just a concert with some mics in the room. A local preview happened April 14 at Joyce Garver Theater in Camas, and the main recording performance is set for May 9 at Revolution Hall. (enspirearts.org) ### Who is E. Ellison? E. Ellison is a Portland musician writing the material the choir will perform. The show listing frames *Origins* as Ellison’s forthcoming record, with the Camas singers brought in as a central part of the live version rather than as background decoration. That matters, because it makes the students part of the artistic identity of the project itself. (everout.com) ### How big is the choir’s role? Big — really big. One event listing says about 170 Camas High School choir students are involved. The set is described as 16 songs, some in Portuguese, arranged for SATB choir, with instrumentation by Alex Radakovich and Hybrid Rainbow. So this is not a cameo. It is a large-scale choral production wrapped around Ellison’s songwriting. (ma.to) ### Why does Revolution Hall matter? Because venue choice tells you what kind of project this is. Revolution Hall is a professional Portland room, not a school auditorium, and the event is being sold publicly through a ticketing platform. Basically, Camas students are stepping into the same ecosystem regional touring and recording artists use. That gives(ma.to)legitimacy. (etix.com) ### Is this a one-off experiment? Turns out, no. Camas has a track record here. Oregon ArtsWatch previously highlighted the choir’s work with Alicia Jo Rabins on *I Was A Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs*, another major collaboration that led to a world-premiere co(etix.com)laborative projects with outside artists for years. (orartswatch.org) ### So what are students actually getting out of it? The obvious answer is performance experience, but the bigger thing is process. Students get to rehearse original music, work inside a professional-scale production, and perform for a recording that can circulate beyond the concert night. That is different from contest choir or spring concer(orartswatch.org)ade when there is a real deliverable at the end. (enspirearts.org) ### Why does this stand out from normal school arts programming? Most school music programs train students to reproduce existing repertoire well. This model asks them to help launch new work. That is a harder and more adult assignment — fewer templates, more uncertainty, more listening. Camas seems to have built a niche around exactly that kind of collaborati(enspirearts.org)le and more like creative partners inside ambitious regional projects. (orartswatch.org) ### Bottom line The news here is not just that a choir is singing with an artist. It is that Camas has made a habit of moving students into the professional lane — live rooms, new music, public releases — and *Origins* looks like the next proof that the model is real. (enspirearts.org)