Get to know us….
Nan Hamer, soprano staff singer

My mother sang and LOVED music like much of her family, and my father whistled all the time but claimed zero musical ability. My father served in the Air Force and we lived in many places both stateside and abroad, so I was exposed to a variety of music. I played a few different instruments growing up, including guitar and clarinet. I went to Vienna for Art History my junior year of college and fell in with scurrilous characters: Indiana University Music students! They were mostly singers, and I found my people! They were auditioning for the Vienna Youth Choir and said I should come along. Somehow, I got in and that was my first real taste of singing Classical music, Handel's Messiah in German.

I came to Portland and was singing a bit when one of my friends said "you should audition for Portland Symphonic Choir!" They were doing Handel’s Messiah AND the Bach B Minor Mass that year. I auditioned and was accepted and that experience launched a new chapter in my life. I began to take lessons and went back to university to get a second BA in music, and now I am a full-time voice teacher and singer.  

I've been in Portland Symphonic Choir since 1988, gaining many friends and performing an amazing amount of music and I look forward to many more years with them. Tell your friends to join a choir…you don't have to be a soloist to have a blast! I am one of those "band and choir kids" who likes the rehearsing and learning even more than the performing. I'm so grateful for the opportunities music-making with my friends have given me and it's my joy to spread that by encouraging students to hang out with their musician friends for a lifetime of fun!

Nan lives and teaches voice in her home in North Portland with two very demanding cats. She has a closet full of yarn that someday she will knit with again, when she has more time. She spends time working out, horseback riding, and in her garden.