Biography
In a career spanning over twenty years, Jodie has written choral, vocal and concert pieces, drawing on a lifetime working with singers as a musical director, arranger, composer and performer.
In 2019, Jodie composed the score for The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s production of Pericles. Jodie has produced a number of her works in Australia, including the children’s cantata The Tailor of Gloucester, an immersive light opera of Polly (who famously put the kettle on) and the oratorio Letters To A Queen. She has held several composer residencies. In 2018, funded by a scholarship from the Kodaly Music Education Institute of Australia, Jodie published Singing The Dots – a suite of pedagogical SATB songs composed for community choirs.
In addition to her choral works, Jodie has composed a range of solo vocal pieces. In 2017 she produced and recorded And In The Centre We Dance, a concert of sacred music performed by the singers who inspired each work. Recently, working with Australian Soprano Bethany Hill, Jodie composed the song cycle Fire Songs, exploring the mythic stories of the Celtic Goddess Brigid. Bethany premiered this work at the 2018 Peninsula Summer Music Festival.
Jodie’s understanding of choral and vocal music draws on her wide singing experience in jazz, opera, oratorio, choral music, and children’s theatre. At the heart of her compositional voice is an enduring love of folk music. After a childhood learning celtic folk songs from her mother, Jodie became a folksinger/songwriter in the 90s, before forming an acapella duo with her husband Emlyn. Together they have crafted, performed and taught their unique arrangements of celtic and roots folksongs at concerts, festivals and workshops around Australia.
Jodie has a BA in Women’s Studies and Anthropology, graduate qualifications in Professional Communication and a Masters in Music. She has studied composition with Alan Belkin, Olla Palmqvist, Tony Lillywhite and Carl Crossin. In 2018 Jodie moved from Australia to Nashville Tennessee with her husband where she has taken up a Composer Residency at Downtown Presbyterian Church.
Composer website: http://www.songaweekbyjodie.com/
Featured Works
The Morning Star, for Soprano solo with SATB choir.
I composed this song for the stunning voice of Bethany Hill. Her voice is filled with starlight, and I drew on the idea of musica universalis – the ancient idea of the music of the spheres. The text includes writing by Walt Whitman and Shakespeare. Thank you to Bethany and the singers of The Jupiter Choir for realising it so beautifully, and Ray Thomas and Peter Day for the live recording. More info here: http://www.songaweekbyjodie.com/the-songs-1/2017/8/20/the-morning-star
– Jodie O’Regan
Featured in Sacred Music Waves (December 2019)
MAKING WAVES 