ShawneeDispatch.com

Shawnee — Shawnee Mission North High School choir teacher Patrice Sollenberger is leaving for Los Angeles Thursday to attend the Grammys, but she's not just a spectator, she's a nominee.

Sollenberger sang with the Kansas City Chorale on "Grechaninov's Passion Week," which is nominated for four Grammy Awards including producer of the year, best classical album, best choral performance and best engineered album. The Chorale's "Eternal Rest" album also was nominated for producer of the year. The Chorale is conducted by Charles Bruffy and is joined by the Phoenix Bach Choir on both nominated albums.

Although Sollenberger has been with the Chorale since 1992 and is now the group's artistic director, singing and teaching wasn't always her passion.

"As long as I lived I was not going to teach," said the choir teacher who has been at Shawnee Mission North since 1991. Before coming to North she also taught in Spring Hill and in Kansas City, Kan. Sollenberger also is the music director at Valley View United Methodist Church.

During high school and college, Sollenberger had her sights set on playing the oboe.

"I wanted to play in a symphonic orchestra," she said. "I had seen those wonderful films that the New York Philharmonic had sent out - we couldn't get them on TV like we can now - and the oboe player on that first one was just the most amazing sound I'd ever heard in my life and I thought 'that is what I've got to do.'"

While she studied oboe in college, Sollenberger also sang with the choir at Kansas University and she decided to get her education degree just in case.

Sollenberger said her life changed when she started teaching at Baker University.

"My dad was the choral director at a church in Paola, but he was retiring and he asked if I wanted to come down and do it," she said. "So I did that and I immediately fell in love with conducting and I thought 'OK, this is where I need to be. This is what I need to be doing is conducting.'"

So Sollenberger went back to KU and received her master's degree in choral conducting.

"That's where my life changed, and that is where choral became my influence," she said.

And although she didn't want to teach at first, she said she loves it now.

"It is such a responsibility to help young people understand the value of work and of detail and of sharing themselves with others through music," she said. "That is an essential part of our society that in many ways is missing because we are so consumed by individual work with our computers and our video games and our television.

"With specifically choral singing you are sharing part of yourself with a group of other people that allows more sensitivity, communication, joy and just all of those things that fill us as human beings."

Sollenberger said her students know about the Chorale's nomination and they have asked her to collect autographs from celebrities.

"Every day we add to the list," senior Jennifer Craighead said.

Craighead is the student president of the Choral Department at North and has been in choir since her sophomore year. She said Sollenberger's enthusiasm for music is evident in class.

"She brings a lot of energy and a lot of passion," she said. "She's so involved with the music, her passion flows through."

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