Ethan Allred | Featured Artist

From as early as he can remember, Ethan Allred has been drawn to two things: birds and music. Over the years, those parallel passions have shaped a life and career that moves fluidly between the concert stage and the wilderness.

Ethan first sang with Resonance Ensemble as a bass in the 2018 Pride concert, and he has been honored to join Resonance for many concerts since then. For this performance, his wildlife photography will be projected behind the choir, bringing his two passions together on the same stage. 

Ethan's approach to photography has been shaped by his work studying the birds of the Pacific Northwest, from the sagebrush steppes of eastern Washington to the lush coniferous forests of the Cascades. He has spent countless hours walking through these landscapes, listening and watching for the smallest signs of life: a bird calling from the canopy, movement in the brush, a flash of wings across the open sky. His photographs aim to share the beauty of those moments and inspire viewers to consider the remarkable birds we still have the privilege to encounter as we walk through the forest, or even a city street.

In his most recent fieldwork, Ethan conducted point-count surveys of bird communities in southern Oregon and northern California, followed by a stint monitoring and banding migratory raptors in Nevada's Goshute Mountains. He was also tickled to win an award (for a photo of a squirrel, believe it or not) in the 2026 Bird Alliance of Oregon photography contest.

On the musical side of his life, Ethan studied at Lewis & Clark College in Portland before earning an M.A. in musicology from the University of Michigan, where his thesis explored choral music and politics in 20th-century France. After returning to Portland, he worked in arts communications, including as a marketer and website manager for the Oregon Symphony. He currently serves as chief program annotator for Chamber Music Northwest and has written program notes for ensembles including the Oregon Symphony, Michigan Philharmonic, and Portland Columbia Symphony. He also wrote the liner notes for a Grammy-nominated recording of Darius Milhaud’s Oresteian Trilogy.

Ethan hopes this concert will inspire us to appreciate the beauty of the world we share - and to consider how we might preserve it for ourselves, for the birds, and for all Earth's creatures.

Ethan’s wildlife photography appears on these Resonance programs:

• For the Birds

More of Ethan's photography can be found on Instagram @ethanallredphotography.