Theodore Sipes: voice

Theodore Sipes, baritone, was appointed Assistant Professor of Voice at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the Fall of 2006, where he teaches applied voice and voice related courses. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in vocal performance from the University of Michigan School of Music in 2004 where he studied with Freda Herseth. He has also studied with Leslie Guinn, Martin Katz, Robert Spillman, Gustav Meier, Edward Berkley, Jay Lessinger, Edward Parmentier, Robert Shewan and Allan Mosher.

Dr. Sipes’ operatic experience includes productions of La Cenerentola, The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, L’incoronazione di Poppea, The Tender Land, and Die Zauberflöte. While teaching at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho he was involved in the Palouse Opera Project, taking an opera about the adventures of Lewis and Clark to elementary school children in Idaho and Washington. In oratorio he has been heard as baritone soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Vaughan William’s Dona Nobis Pacem, Haydn’s The Creation, Handel’s Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Magnificat, Schubert’s Mass in G, and David McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata. He has appeared recently with Bluefield College’s Variations ensemble, the Bay Chorale and the Saginaw Valley State University Choir and Orchestra, the New River Valley Symphony Orchestra and Virginia Tech Choirs and the Blacksburg Master Chorale and Orchestra. He has given recitals in Virginia, Washington, Idaho, Kansas, New York, San Francisco and Michigan, and has participated in the Ann Arbor Festival of Song.

From 2004-2006 Dr. Sipes was a Visiting Lecturer in Music at the University of Idaho’s Lionel Hampton School of Music, where he taught applied voice, vocal literature, operatic literature and lyric diction. Dr. Sipes has also taught at Central College of Kansas, Concordia University-Ann Arbor and Spring Arbor University. Before beginning his academic career Dr. Sipes was a church music director in churches in Kansas and Rochester, New York.

Dr. Sipes has recently premiered several new works. Two of these works were written expressly for Sipes’ voice. “Soul” for baritone, computer and audience was written by Ico Bukvich in collaboration with Dr. Sipes and was most recently performed at the National Convention of the College Music Society. “Three Songs for a Wedding,” settings of English translations of Pablo Neruda sonnets by Manly Romero, was premiered in December 2008 in Virginia and then again in April 2009 at the University of the Streets in New York City. A Niles Research Grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech covered expenses related to the commissioning of “Three Songs for a Wedding”. Dr. Sipes also recently premiered a song cycle by Kent Holliday entitled “Seasonal Sketches.”

Visit the Theodore Sipes website for additional information.