Conductor and educator Shohei Kobayashi is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at Reed College where they teach courses in music theory and lead three ensembles: Chorus, a large community choir; Treble Voices Ensemble, an auditioned soprano-alto choir; and Collegium Musicum, a select mixed chamber choir. Recent repertoire highlights include Margaret Bonds’s Credo, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem, Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands, works by Komitas Vardapet, as well as local and world premieres of new works and arrangements by Judy A. Rose, Paolo Debuque, Mari Esabel Valverde, Majel Connery, Shruthi Rajasekar, and Reed alumni Naama Friedman ’22 and Asta Rossi ’25.
Since 2023, Shohei has served as Associate Conductor and Artistic Advisor for Resonance Ensemble, a Portland-based professional vocal ensemble founded and led by longtime BCI friend Katherine FitzGibbon dedicated to performing powerful concerts sparking meaningful social change through commissioning, collaborating, and connecting. A champion of new works for choir, Shohei has conducted the world premieres of numerous Resonance commissions, including works by Darrell Grant, Judy A. Rose, Kimberly R. Osberg, and Kenji Bunch. (These works and more can be heard on Resonance Ensemble’s 2026 release with Aerocade Music, Safe Harbor.)
An active guest conductor and clinician, Shohei brings joyful focus and intentional musicality to their work with professional vocal ensembles, instrumental ensembles and orchestras, and collegiate, community, church, and high school choirs. From 2016 to 2020, Shohei served as assistant conductor for the UMS Choral Union, directed by Scott Hanoian, and helped prepare the 175-member auditioned symphonic chorus for collaborations with Budapest Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra on works including Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 (“Kaddish”), Sibelius’s Snöfrid, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Symphony No. 9, and Britten’s War Requiem.
Shohei is also a teacher of conducting, active locally and nationally, whose recent engagements include guest teaching graduate and undergraduate conducting students at University of Oklahoma, University of South Carolina, St. Olaf College, and Hope College; multiple years as Associate Director for the Choral Conducting Institute at Interlochen with Jerry Blackstone; and serving as clinician for the Undergraduate Conducting Masterclass at the Southwest American Choral Directors Association’s 2024 conference.
In addition to conducting and teaching, Shohei performs and records with jazz-rock quintet called Onion, sings with Resonance Ensemble, and works as a freelance vocalist in the Portland area. Shohei holds a DMA and MM in Conducting (Choral) from University of Michigan and a BA in Music (composition focus) from Lewis & Clark College.