Faculty Bio: Denise Ellis

Denise Ellis is a choral music specialist whose experience is rooted in American public school music education. Ellis has over a decade of teaching experience in the public school setting, teaching ensemble skills, music literacy, program building, and mentoring first-year teachers.

Emigrating from the Philippines at nine years old, Ellis’ one refuge was her elementary school choir. The everyday kindness of others she encountered in her school music program is what affixed her on her musical path. Ellis believes musical communities benefit all people, no matter who and where they are, and these communities are strongest when its individuals know the power of a kind and pluralistic collective.

Ellis teaches for the Hannibal Central School District: a small, rural, public school in upstate New York. The high school has just one choral ensemble called the Hannibal Senior High Chorus. This ensemble boasts a busy performing season, traveling across the eastern seaboard, from New York City, to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and most recently in Toronto, Canada. An awardwinning, non-auditioned ensemble, these students have a wide array of experience, abilities, and learning differences.

Ellis holds conducting degrees from the University of South Carolina and Syracuse University, and a Music Education degree from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Ellis continues to learn when she’s not in her own classroom, most recently as a competitor for the Chamber Orchestra of New York’s Conducting Workshop and Respighi Prize in Conducting, and as a Choral Scholar for Chorus America’s Choral-Orchestral Conducting Academy at Cal State Fullerton.