Hailed as a “natural, most charming” performer, mezzo-soprano Sarah Maines’ favorite roles include Margaret in The Light in the Piazza, Claudia in Nine, and Maurya in Riders to the Sea. Dr. Maines is a member of the Portland Opera Chorus, voice faculty at the University of Portland and Reed College, and served on the Cascade Chapter board of the National Association of Teachers of Singing for seven years. She frequently performs with Portland companies and ensembles such as Fear No Music, Resonance Ensemble, Broadway Rose Theatre, Lakewood Theatre, and Mocks Crest Opera. As a practicing singing voice specialist, Dr. Maines administers voice habilitation to singers referred by laryngologists and speech-language pathologists. A Lessac-Madsen and Casper-Stone Confidential Flow Therapy Clinical Provider, she is certified in Contemporary Commercial Music; the LoVetri Method, and completed training in transgender and non-binary voice pedagogy with Liz Jackson Hearns of The Voice Lab. Dr. Maines holds a BA in music from Berea College and MM and DMA degrees in voice pedagogy from Shenandoah Conservatory. She is a published researcher who presented at the Voice Foundation Annual Symposium and the Pan-European Voice Conference and frequently lectures on vocal health, pathology, and function. Dr. Maines previously served on the voice faculty at the Shenandoah Conservatory Arts Academy, Patrick Henry College, and Trinity Washington University. She lives in Portland with Jasper, her faithful four-legged hiking companion.

Pianist Chuck Dillard is a multi-faceted and sought after performer, educator, conductor, lecturer, producer, and arranger - a musician at his best while working with others. Hired as a church pianist at age seven, he fashioned his musical beginnings, education and career around the art of collaboration. In 2016, Chuck was brought to Portland State University to create a new graduate program in Collaborative Piano. Since doing so, his students have gone on to additional graduate study or directly into successful careers as teachers and collaborators. Previously, he served on faculty at the University of Texas at Austin and Furman University.

As a pianist, Dr. Dillard enjoys collaborating with performers ranging from sopranos to contrabassoonists. Some of his recital partners include vocalists Audrey Luna and Barbara Conrad (Metropolitan Opera), Donnie Ray Albert (Houston Grand Opera) and Morgan Smith (San Francisco Opera) and instrumentalists Joseph Alessi (New York Philharmonic), Stephen Lange (Boston Symphony), Gerry Pagano (St. Louis Symphony), Paul Pollard (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), Jorgen Van Rijen (Royal Concertgebouw), Harvey Pittel (Pittel Trio) and Douglas Yeo (Boston Symphony). An enthusiastic supporter of recital evolution, his concerts often include elements of photography, dance, spoken word and other integrated art forms. In 2022, he released “Joys Abiding” (Navona label) with Dana Zenobi and Oliver Worthington - an album of vocal duets by female composers - along with publishing an anthology of the recorded works. An album of previously unrecorded lieder by Fanny Hensel with baritone Harry Baechtel is currently in process for the Acis label.

In the field of opera, Chuck has a broad range of experiences as a conductor, coach and pianist. He has worked for companies including Austin Opera, Opera Carolina, Central City Opera, Piedmont Opera and his collaboration with Opera Colorado on a new production of Nixon in China is available on the Naxos label. In addition to working professionally, Dr. Dillard is very involved in vocal and operatic training for singers from the high school to the pre-professional level. He has spent his summers with young singers in programs such as Opera Viva! in Verona, Italy, the Astoria Music Festival, and Spotlight on Opera in Austin, TX. Operatic conducting credits include Le nozze di Figaro, Falstaff, Carmen, Little Women, The Crucible, and La femme Boheme - the first all-female version of Puccini’s opera. During the 2022-2023 season, Chuck will be leading the PSU Opera program through Die Zauberflöte as well as a workshop premiere of Good Country by Keith Allegretti and Cecelia Raker.

In 2018, Dr. Dillard founded and produced the first-ever Queer Opera performances. This organization was created to provide representation of queer individuals and their stories through the traditional genre of opera. Now in its fourth season, Queer Opera has been very popular with audiences for its presentation of modern relationships and identities on the historically heteronormative opera stage. Major productions include a virtual performance of Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief during the Covid lockdown, and Rosśa Crean’s The Times as Nightfall, a micro opera which is imagined as a sequel to Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

As an educator, Dr. Dillard crafts his instruction around the belief that today’s musician should be able to make a living in their art form while creating beautiful music in the process. He has developed courses in vocal and instrumental accompanying, lyric diction, music theory, collaborative literature and art song history. He is frequently seen at national conferences speaking on topics including orchestrating at the piano, works of Reynaldo Hahn, and how to work with pianists in voice lessons. Past conference presentations have been given at the National Performing Arts Convention, ClarinetFest, International Trombone Festival, National Opera Association, Music Teachers National Association, Collegiate Music Society, International Double Reed Society, and Texas Music Educators Association.

Dr. Dillard received degrees in collaborative piano from the University of Colorado – Boulder (DMA) and the University of Maryland – College Park (MM). Also, he received two Bachelor of Music degrees from Furman University in piano performance and music theory. His principal teachers were Anne Epperson, Robert McCoy, Rita Sloan, Ruby Morgan and Derek Parsons. He is a member of Pi Kappa Lamba and Sigma Alpha Iota as a Friend of the Arts.