Music Staff

Barbara Brooks is an active vocal coach, pianist and music director in the Twin Cities area. She has served as coach/pianist for several opera companies including Canadian Opera, Minnesota Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Banff, Kentucky Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Berkshire Opera and the Wesley Balk Opera/Music Theatre Institute, as well as for university opera programs at the University of North Texas and the University of Minnesota. She is presently the principal pianist of the Minnesota Chorale. She also served as a vocal coach in the Resident Artists program at the Minnesota Opera. Ms. Brooks holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Augsburg College and a Master of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Michigan. She attended the Britten-Pears school in England where she studied accompanying with Martin Isepp.

 

Dr. Jeffrey Stirling is a well-known Twin-Cities conductor and music educator. Currently Jeff conducts the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies along with the Saint Paul Civic Symphony and the Northeast Orchestra. Dr. Stirling holds degrees from Yale and Northwestern Universities and pursued advanced studies at the Tanglewood and Salzburg music festivals and at the Paris Conservatory under the auspices of the Fondation des Etats-Unis. In recent seasons, Stirling has been a cover conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra, appeared with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and been a guest conductor with the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, Bemidji Symphony and Skylark Opera. He has also directed the orchestra programs at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Cloud State University, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and at the University of Northern Iowa. Jeffrey has also been a guest instructor for the Chamber Music Association of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.