Mahidol university and the salaya tiny young chorus

Hello from Saraburi Province! 

Saturday was one of the more travel-heavy days of tour with a two and half drive from our beach day in Pattaya back to Bangkok, a song exchange, and then another two hour drive north through rural Thailand to choir camp.

The drive to Bangkok was absolutely worth it when we arrived at Mahidol University (pronounced Mah-hee-dohn) and had a song exchange with the Salaya Tiny Young Chorus, made up of adults from the community. We were not the only audience as many friends and family of the choir and school of music were in attendance to support their singers. Mahidol University is the largest music school in the country and they even house the Southeast Asian Music Museum in their building.

The Salaya Tiny Young Chorus reminded us a lot of the Community Chorus at PSU where a group of professors, retired faculty, and community members have been singing together since 2013. The Community Chorus recently appointed a new conductor, whereas previously they changed conductors as new GTAs cycled through the graduate conducting program. The new conductor will be our very own Ian Timmons, a GTA and 2025 graduate of the PSU's Choral Conducting, Master's in Music, degree program.

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Interview with Ian Timmons,
​Master of Music, Choral conducting - PSU Class of 2025

During our travel through the Thai countryside outside of Bangkok, we took a moment to interview Ian as one of our most recent graduates! Ian conducted Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans, arr. Claude Debussy, earlier during our travels at KuAsh Theatre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which you can watch on YouTube above.

Ian: Hello! My name is Ian Timmons. I just recently graduated from Portland State with a Masters in Choral Conducting.

Q: And what are you doing now?

Ian: I am going to be continuing on as the community chorus director at Portland state as well as working with professor Coty Raven Morris on starting a recovery choir.

Q: Recovery choir, what is that?

Ian: It is a choir for people who are in recovery from addiction. I am 7 years sober so it is something that is very near dear to my heart, so I am very excited for my two passions - sobriety and choral music - to come together in a way that is going to be really meaningful.

Q: What interested you about community chorus and what are you most excited to do with them?

Ian: I love working with older singers. Something that Ethan often says that I really agree with is: the most precious thing you can give is your time. And so I think the people that volunteer their personal time to make music are the kinds of people that I want to be spending my time with.
This will be my third year with community chorus, and I’m excited to work on more choral fundamentals with them. Our rehearsals are about 50 minutes, so we don't always have time to get into the nitty gritty of it. They are at a place where they have a lot of potential vocally, and so we can really start focusing on those choral fundamentals to take their ensemble to the next level.

Q: Who is in this choir and who has it been historically?

Ian: It is mostly alumni, faculty, and staff. They met in the lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That’s another thing (that makes them so dedicated) is that they give up their lunch hour. Most of them are like, eating a sandwich as they come in and out of the door, but they are so dedicated to making music that they'll give up the one hour a day they have to come and sing. We were actually highlighted in the PSU Magazine recently - you can watch the highlight below: 

Ian: I’ve also been surprised at the community aspect of it; several of the new members, when I ask how they found out about us, say that they just googled "community chorus" and this was the first one that came up. So, kudos to whoever is in charge of Portland State’s google algorithm! And that also tells me that there's a real need for that community chorus, that people want to sing. That's part of my philosophy, that humans are more like birds than we think. I think we are supposed to be singing, and somewhere along the way, for a lot of people someone told them that shouldn't be. I didn't realize until I started on this path how many people wanted to sing but aren’t because somewhere along the way someone shamed them. One of my biggest goals for the rest of my working life is to eradicate shame around singing. I really believe everyone should be singing.

Q: What was one of the biggest takeaways from your Masters degree at portland state?

Ian: I have an undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance from PSU and I was doing a lot of directing after that. I became the director of a church choir, then I started directing musicals, and then I found myself in the pit of a musical. And that was really a scary moment for me because it was the most I have ever done in that arena as the conductor. At that point I thought, “if I’m really going to do this, I should know more about it.” The biggest thing is that I know so much more now than I did, which seems obvious, but you get out what you put in and I was really excited to get back and learn. In my undergraduate I had a lot of stuff going on in my life and I wasn't necessarily ready when I started that. But I was ready when I started my masters, and I got the absolute most out of it that I could, which was very inspiring to a younger version of me.

Q: What are you most excited about going into your career post-grad school?
Ian: I am just excited to get as many people singing as I can. I grew up in Portland and I’ll be 36 this year, so I also feel a responsibility to give back to a town that has given me so much. I’m very happy with my life at this point and I want to give back to the community. I also grew up in the Portland Public School District, so at some point I'm interested in giving back there and giving them something they gave me. 

Q: Any final words?

Ian: I love choral music. I thought I was a nerd before but it’s confirmed now. I am a nerd and I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

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Thanks for all you do in support of the Choirs at PSU, Ian - we appreciate you.  

Come back tomorrow for a highlight of our time at choir camp in Thailand! 

​- Lindsey