Blake Applegate, Director

Blake Applegate currently serves as the Director of Music at Holy Rosary parish, as well as the Director of Cantores in Ecclesia, a choral organization of adult and youth choirs dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony in its liturgical context. He has conducted Cantores in Ecclesia at home and abroad, including performances of Poulenc’s Mass in G at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and music by Casals, Guerrero, Victoria, and Vivanco throughout Portugal and Spain. He is also the Executive Director of  the annual Portland-based International William Byrd Festival, now in its 24th year. An accomplished tenor, Blake spent a formative year as a choral scholar under Dr. Richard Marlow of Trinity College Cambridge, and is one of Cappella Romana’s original singers, having taken part in the ensemble’s first concert in 1991. He has performed widely throughout the Pacific Northwest with groups such as Trinity Consort, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and the Oregon Bach Festival. He has also participated in numerous recordings, and was featured as solo cantor on a series of Cantores in Ecclesia’s Gregorian chant CDs produced by Oregon Catholic Press. Deeply committed to the musical education of children and young adults, he and his wife, Anna Song, direct the choral program at Young Musicians and Artists Summer Camp at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.