Patrick O'Shea

Patrick Michael O'Shea (b. February 15, 1967) is a composer, conductor and university music educator.

A native of Massachusetts, Patrick Michael O'Shea joined the music faculty of Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in August 1997, after teaching at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He holds degrees from Shenandoah University (B.Mus., "summa cum laude" in Vocal Performance), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.Mus. in Choral Conducting) and Arizona State University (D.M.A. in Choral Music). He has conducted choirs of all ages, from children's choirs to adult community choruses, and currently conducts the Concert Choir, a 64-voice select ensemble of mixed voices, and the premiere choral ensemble at Saint Mary's, the Chamber Singers, which normally numbers 24. Dr. O'Shea also teaches Music History, Vocal Literature, and Vocal Pedagogy, as well as special topics courses in music history.

His composition teachers have included two students of Nadia Boulanger: C. Russell Woollen (1923-1994) and Robert Shafer, as well as Thomas Fredrickson, and Randall Shinn. O'Shea's compositional output has focused primarily on choral music, from numerous anthems and other liturgical music, to works for chamber choir (e.g., "Corpus Christi Carol," 2007, commissioned by the Music Society of Balliol College, Oxford, "Drei Rilkegesänge", 2007;"Sei Nacht zu mir: Four Poems of SAID", 2004) and larger works for accompanied chorus (e.g., "Te Deum", 1997). He has also composed a number of instrumental chamber works, such as the two-movement "Sonata Piccola" for Violin and Piano (2002), and the four-movement piano work, "Elements" (2003), written for pianist Ned Kirk.

O'Shea's compositional style is generally tonal/modal, but with an expanded language including quartal and quintal harmonies, particularly in chamber music for instruments or combinations of instruments and voices (e.g., "A Lot Like Now" for soprano, mezzo-soprano, flute and piano, 2006).

In addition to being a published composer, O'Shea has been active as a church choir director in a number of denominations, and has served as a clinician and guest conductor in the United States and Europe. He is currently the Coordinator of Liturgical Music for the Saint Mary’s University Winona Campus. He is a member of American Composers Forum, American Choral Directors Association, the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

Dr. O'Shea's biography appears in the 2001 - 2007 editions of Marquis "Who's Who in America".

Sources

*"Who's Who In America, 2007." New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who [http://www.marquiswhoswho.com] , 2007.
*Minnewiki: The Minnesota Music Encyclopedia [http://minnewiki.publicradio.org/index.php/Patrick_O%27Shea]
*Saint Mary's University of Minnesota Music Department [http://www2.smumn.edu/deptpages/~music/faculty/patrick_oshea.php]
*O'Shea, Patrick Michael. "A stylistic and structural analysis of Russell Woollen's 'La Corona'." D.M.A. dissertation, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1995. 188 pp. [http://library.lib.asu.edu/record=b3409060]
*Patrick M. O'Shea, Composer (web site) [http://www.poshea.com/]