Meet the Conductor

Cathy Bleecker

Currently serving as the director of music activities at The Evergreen School in Shoreline, Cathy has an extensive background in choral music and musical theatre. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Redlands in southern California with a double major in Music and Theatre Arts with an Education emphasis. After teaching for several years in high schools in California and the Washington D.C. area (northern Virginia) she attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo where she received a Master of Music degree in Conducting. While working on her degree, she sang in and conducted in both traditional and jazz choral ensembles, including the internationally known "Gold Company" vocal jazz ensemble. She then attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she completed all coursework and exams for a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Choral Music. (No, she's not "Dr. Bleecker!" She's not a DMA, she's ABD... all but dissertation!)

From 1989-1992, Cathy served as an assistant professor of music at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, where she directed the University Chorale, University Singers and the "Park Avenue" vocal jazz ensembles. She left PLU to return to teaching high school (Central Kitsap and Bellevue high schools) and then took a short break in her teaching career to study psychology (traditional, transpersonal and organizational) at Antioch University... just for fun! She also took time out to be trained and certified as a life coach. She returned to teaching through a surprising twist of fate and ended up in the elementary school music classroom, a place that she has come to love. She has taught at Lake Hills Elementary School for the last seven years and, this past year, also began teaching at Evergreen (a private school for "highly capable students"). In 2009, she became a National Board Certified Teacher. Beginning school year 2010-2011, she will be teaching full time at Evergreen, where she will teach pre-school through 3rd grade general music, 4th/5th grade musical theatre workshop and a middle school choir. Cathy has served as a guest conductor and adjudicator for music festivals across the U.S. and Canada, working with traditional choral and vocal jazz groups alike. 

Cathy's theatre experience includes serving as director/music director for more than 30 full-scale musicals (favorites include A Chorus Line, Wonderful Town, Anything Goes, and Once Upon a Mattress); writing, directing, and producing numerous staged choral revues; as well as acting, singing, and dancing (favorite roles include LUCY in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and ROSIE in Bye Bye Birdie). She served as music director for the highly acclaimed Woodinville High School theatre department for six years and was nominated twice as "Outstanding Music Director" by the Fifth Avenue Theatre High School Musical Awards judges. Recently, she has served as music director for the Second Story Repertory Theatre in Redmond (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and the upcoming 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), and is currently in production with the new, north Seattle-based youth theatre group, CORE Theatrics, with a summer stock production of Spelling Bee.