Vincent Oakes is in his twentieth year as Artistic Director of the Chattanooga Boys Choir. He earned the Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Florida and Master of Sacred Music degree in Choral Conducting from Emory University, studying under James Morrow and Eric Nelson. In addition to teaching public school choral music and serving churches in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, he has also served as music director of the Emory University Exodus Singers and the Candler School of Theology Youth Theological Initiative. A frequent choral clinician and guest conductor of honor and festival choirs, recent conducting engagements have included the Vocalizze Choral Festival in Portugal, the ACDA International Conductors Exchange Program in Cuba, the Bangkok International Choral Festival in Thailand, and honor choirs throughout the United States. Mr. Oakes has also been a conductor and clinician at the Lake Junaluska, Massenetta Springs, and Montreat worship music conferences and a clinician on conducting, choral literacy and musicianship, and working with the adolescent singing voice.  He has published articles and reviews in Choral Journal and has authored chapter on child and adolescent voices in the textbooks Choral Pedagogy by Robert Sataloff and Brenda Smith and Class Voice: Fundamental Skills for Lifelong Singing by Ron Burrichter and Brenda Smith.

Mr. Oakes is an active member of National Association for Music Education and the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), of which he served as Southern Division Chair of Boychoir Repertoire & Standards from 2005-2011. He is a Past-President of Tennessee ACDA and served as President of ACDA’s eleven-state Southern Region from 2019-2021, chairing its Lift Every Voice conference in Mobile, AL in 2020. Mr. Oakes is also the Chair of the Fine Arts Department and Director of Choral Music at the Baylor School in Chattanooga, where he conducts four student ensembles and the faculty choir. He received Baylor’s 2016 Ireland Chair for Distinguished Teaching and the Belz-Lipman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education from the Tennessee Holocaust Commission in 2021.