Since its founding in 1975, the Portland State Chamber Choir has performed and competed in venues across the US and around the world, earning over 30 medals and awards in international choir competitions, including being the only American choir to have won the ‘Seghizzi’ International Competition for Choral Singing in Italy in 2013, and the Bali International Choir Festival in Indonesia in 2017.

Praised by Classics Today as ‘one of the finest choirs in the world’, the choir has performed multiple times at National and Divisional Conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education, and in 2014 hosted the 2014 National Conference of the National Collegiate Choral Organization. In the summer of 2020, they will represent the US at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand. In February 2011 the Chamber Choir collaborated with Portland-born composer Morten Lauridsen, and the choir’s 2012 album A Drop in the Ocean was favourably reviewed and featured in both Fanfare and Stereophile magazines, and was a finalist for the 2012 American Prize in Choral Music. Their 2014 recording Into Unknown Worlds, was named a ‘Recording to Die For’ by Stereophile magazine—the first student recording to receive this distinction—and was a finalist for the 2014 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award (CARA) Award for Best Classical Album. Their most recent album, The Doors of Heaven, featuring the music of Ēriks Ešenvalds (Naxos 8.579008. 2017) debuted at number one on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart (a first for a university choir), and was also a number one seller on Amazon and iTunes, with Apple Music adding the album to its The A-List: Classical playlist.

Since 2013 the choir has performed regularly with the Oregon Symphony in works as diverse as Debussy’s Sirènes, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Symphony No. 9, Handel’s Messiah, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and Stravinsky’s Perséphone in a fully staged production with direction by Michael Curry. In 2014 they presented the Portland premiere performances of both David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion and Samuel Barber’s The Lovers.