Nick Newman, Music Director
Nick Newman is a second-year Doctoral student in Conducting at the University of Northern Colorado. At UNC, Nick teaches advanced conducting and rehearsal techniques in the music education department as well as serving as director of the University Singers. Nick also serves as Music Director of St. Paul’s Episcopal and Trinity Lutheran Church in Fort Collins, Colorado. He recently received his Masters of Music in Choral Conducting at San Diego State University. He sang in SDSU’s Chamber Choir, Concert Choir, and University Chorus while serving as assistant director of all three choirs during his master’s program. Nick also served as director of choirs at Challenger School in Palo Alto prior to embarking on graduate school. Nick received his B.M. in Music Education at Willamette University, studying under Dr. Wallace Long. While singing with Willamette Singers, Willamette’s vocal jazz ensemble, he served as tenor section leader for the group’s 2016 album Green Garden,Âwhich was named Best Undergraduate Vocal Jazz Ensemble by DownBeat Magazine. ÂNick looks forward to presenting at the Colorado Music Educator Association conference in Colorado Springs and the Arts in Society Conference in Krakow, Poland in 2023. Nick joined the One World Singers as Artistic Director in September, 2022.
Dr. Oliver Ellsworth, Assistant Director and Accompanist
Oliver B. Ellsworthwas born in Oakland, California in 1940 and resided in Berkeley until 1969. As a child he studied piano, violin, and voice. His first choral performance experience began in 1952 when he joined the San Francisco Boys Chorus and sang with them in several productions of the San Francisco Opera. During the 1960s he served as musical director for a number of little theater musicals in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1964 to 1965 he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and commanded a tank platoon near Frankfurt, Germany. In 1969 he served as a coach accompanist for Western Opera Theater, the touring branch of the San Francisco Opera. The same year he received his doctorate in musicology from the University of California and taught medieval music and opera history in the College of Music at the University of Colorado in Boulder until his retirement in 2002.
He joined the Arion Gesangverein, the predecessor of the Denver Turnverein Chorus/One World Singers in 1973 at the invitation of John Paton,the current director, who taught voice at the University of Colorado, and soon became its accompanist and assistant director. For two years, while John Paton was running the University’s exchange program in Regensburg, Germany, he served as the director of the Arion. He has been on all of the previous tours of the
chorus, to include the five European tours in 1984, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2016.
Over the past 49 years he has seen the chorus evolve from a German men’s chorus to a mixed chorus with a world-wide view. Throughout this time the chorus has always been for him an extended family of musicians who share through music their common love for humanity.