Katrina Saporsantos has been speaking full sentences since she was 2, playing the piano and singing songs since she was 3… and doing all of that and more since then.
Born to a family of musicians and songwriters, Katrina was exposed to the world of music at a very early age with piano, composition, theory and bandurria lessons, and was on a path to become a piano prodigy until one fateful day that would steer her course in a different direction. Her piano bench full of music and barely closing shut, she took out her mother’s thick Rodgers & Hammerstein book to help it close and decided to learn some songs from it (“Surrey with the Fringe on Top” and “If I Loved You”, if you must know) and was instantly hooked on vocal music!
Laura has been a choir nerd since the age of seven, when she heard an audition notice on her hometown classical radio station for the San Antonio Children’s Choir and immediately knew she wanted in. After eight years in that ensemble, traveling the world and singing in three part harmony, Laura spent all four years of high school dedicated to the Texas All State Choir process (in three different cities), and after two years as first alternate, made it to second chair of the mixed ensemble her senior year at Westlake HS in Austin.
Jenny Ohrstrom has been captivating audiences and holding audiences captive since she was first introduced to The Little Mermaid as a kid. She was an avid French Horn player all through middle school and high school, and went on to march Mellophone with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps after graduating. A chance run-in at college with a friend from high school led to Jenny auditioning for the college’s choir, and she never looked back. It started with choir, but it steadily expanded to a cappella, vocal jazz, opera, backup vocals, and video game samplers. Jenny’s college plans switched from French Horn Performance to Voice Performance, and she went on to get her AA (Mt. San Antonio College), BM (Central Washington University), and MM degrees (CSU Northridge) in Voice Performance.
A New Jersey native, Abbey lives and works in Austin and has performed in both opera and recital in New York City, San Francisco, Austin, Honolulu, New Jersey, Austria and Italy. Abbey has appeared with the Hawaii Opera Theatre, the New Jersey Opera Theater, the Stefaniensaal in Graz, Austria, the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, The Count Basie Center for the Arts, the Blaisdell Concert Hall in Honolulu and the Teatro della Muse in Ancona, Italy.
When I was in high school in Houston, TX, I was obsessed with the TMEA All-State process. My choir directors were unrelentingly competitive and made every single student in their choir audition for the Region choir. The focus was always on having more All-Staters than any other choir. I swallowed the Kool-Aid fully. I wanted to dominate. I made the Texas All-State choir 3 times. I thought I’d won music.
Trevor Shaw is an Austin-based composer, and the Artistic Director of Inversion Ensemble, a new music-focused choral organization. Trevor’s choral and instrumental compositions have been performed on five continents. He has directed choirs of all ages, at virtually every skill level from youngest beginners to experienced professionals, and has led many choirs on tours throughout the U.S. and the UK.