Music Department Faculty & Staff

Wesley Dunnagan
Voice

A native of Wabash, Indiana, tenor Wesley Dunnagan has been fortunate to perform across the United States and abroad. A specialist in oratorio and concert repertoire, he has been heard in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Notre Dame Vocale and baritone Nathan Gunn in the title role, tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah, La resurrezione, and Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, Coronation Mass, and Große Messe, Haydn’s Nelsonmesse, Beethoven’s Mass in C, and Copland’s The Tender Land Opera Suite.

His opera roles include Hansel and Gretel (the Witch), Lucia di Lammermoor (Arturo), Falstaff (Dr. Caius), Così fan tutte (Ferrando), Der Schauspieldirektor (Vogelsang), Gianni Schicchi (Rinuccio), Henry Cowell’s The Commission (Jonathan), and the world premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti’s First Night at the Opera (Jonathan).

While serving as Assistant Professor of Music at Fort Lewis College, Wesley created the FLC Baroque Ensemble and Durango’s Colla Voce Singers.

Dunnagan was music director for FLC productions such as “Sweeney Todd,” and most recently “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.”

Wesley received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice and Opera at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was also a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow in Italian. He holds a Bachelor of the Arts with Distinction in German Studies and Music from Stanford University and a Master of Sacred Music from the University of Notre Dame. In addition, he spent a year as a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Scholar at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he studied under Berliner Kammersänger Peter Maus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. 

Aileen Razey
Clarinet

Aileen Razey has played alongside
top performers with orchestras such as the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival orchestras. She often subs with Symphoria, Allentown Symphony Orchestra, and Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. She has played under renowned conductors such as Robert Spano, Ludovic Morlot, Patrick Summers, Hugh Wolf, and Christian Arming.

With a mission to break the boundaries between performers and audience, Aileen’s chamber ensembles have performed not only in concert halls, but also in ice-cream shops, dining rooms, museums, and elementary school music classrooms. Her chamber groups commit their playing to standard repertoire through commissions of living composers.

Dr. Razey’s performing has a direct influence on her approach to pedagogy, and vice-versa. There is no greater joy to her than helping musicians realize their personal and professional goals, taking action steps to reach those goals, attaining those goals, and accelerating past to new ones. Her previous clarinet students are now music educators, performing professionally, and attending graduate schools.

Razey earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Clarinet Performance from the University of North Texas with a related field in music education, where she studied with Kimberly Cole Luevano and served as Teaching Fellow in Clarinet. She earned a Master of Music in Clarinet Performance from University of Denver, where she studied with Jeremy Reynolds and served as Graduate Teaching Assistant in Clarinet and Musicology. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Ithaca College, where she studied with Michael Galvan.

Paolo Debuque
Viking Chorus/Chapel Choir

Paolo Debuque is a Filipino/Chinese-American conductor, artistic director, and designer noted for his innovative programming and commitment to grassroots, community-centered art. Trained in conducting, voice, and piano, his engagements have included Head of Performing Arts at the International School of Minnesota, Founding Artistic Director of Path to Peace, a weeklong choral festival for gun violence prevention, and Founding Artistic Director of A Thousand Tongues, a concert series dedicated to amplifying the voices of Asian-American/Pacific Islander artists.

​Paolo currently serves as Artistic Director of Caritas Vocal Ensemble, Chorus Master of the Dakota Valley Symphony and as Chancel Choir Director at Good Samaritan UMC in Edina. He studied music at Swarthmore College and earned the Masters in Choral Conducting at the University of Michigan.

Alex Early
Viola/Violin

Violinist Alexandra Early has performed in the Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, New World Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and Charleston Symphony, among others. She was also a member of the inaugural YouTube Symphony in 2009.

Alex has received fellowships from the New World Symphony, the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival.

In addition to her experience onstage, Alex has appeared in interviews and performances on the BBC, NPR, and PBS.

Alex holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. Her primary teachers include Charles Gray, Burton Kaplan and Paul Kantor. In addition to her life as a violinist, Alex is a certified yoga teacher.

Siriana Lundgren ’19
Musicology

Siriana Lundgren is a third year PhD student in musicology at Harvard, writing a dissertation on the Western United States, gender, performance, and the ways scholarship can reach rural communities. Her research focuses on intersectional feminist critique of people and communities musicking throughout the American West in the late 19th century. Recent projects have included work on the structures of power that surround musicking in the red-light districts of Rocky Mountain mining towns. 

She holds a BM in Vocal Performance and Gender Studies from St. Olaf College, which mostly means that she just loves to sing.

Beyond all the business, she loves relaxing with her Nintendo Switch, singing with friends at impromptu opera gatherings, and getting lost in her hometown mountain ranges back in Montana.

Natalia Moiseeva
Viola/Violin

Russia’s native violinist Natalia Moiseeva holds BM and MM degrees in Violin Performance from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia, and a DMA degree in Violin Performance from the University of Minnesota. She is a prizewinner of international competitions and she has appeared as a soloist with orchestras both in the United States and in Europe. Before immigrating in 2006, she was a member of the Russian State Symphony Orchestra named after Evgeniy Svetlanov. An avid chamber music player and a violinist with the Saint Croix Piano Trio, Natalia regularly performs in the Twin Cities area. She is an Assistant Concertmaster of the Minnesota Opera Orchestra and frequently performs with the Minnesota Orchestra.

Kyle Sanborn
String Bass

Kyle Sanborn began playing bass at the age of 12 in Portland, Oregon. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon and his graduate degree at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with Tyler Abbott and Kurt Muroki, respectively. Sanborn spent his summers with the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Verbier, Switzerland, the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, North Carolina.

Before joining the Minnesota Orchestra, Sanborn served as assistant principal bass of the Calgary Philharmonic. Prior to that, Sanborn was a fellow at the New World Symphony Orchestra and played with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Charlotte Symphony.

Cole Swanson ’15
Musicology

Cole Swanson recently completed his Ph.D. in Musicology at Duke University He served as a lecturer in Musicology at University of North Carolina-Greensboro, teaching American music and the history of western music. As a pianist, vocalist, and percussionist, he has performed a broad repertoire of music across the country with theater companies and choirs at every level. He has served as the assistant music director for the Durham Savoyards (Durham, NC) and the assistant music director for UNC-Chapel Hill’s Music Theater program, and works as a freelance collaborative pianist and vocal coach with soloists and ensembles throughout the greater Triangle NC area.

Cole holds an M.A. in Historical Musicology from Tufts University and a B.A. in Music from St. Olaf.