Our Team

Heather MacLaughlin Garbes is currently Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, where she helped develop and now maintains the UW Baltic Choral Library, the first collection of its kind in the United States. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Mägi Ensemble, a professional women’s ensemble that performs and records Baltic music and has just released its third album, Baltic Home.

Dr. MacLaughlin Garbes has conducted and presented at ACDA National and Divisional conferences, the College Music Society’s International and National conferences, the Library of Congress, and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies conferences. She co-authored the chapter “Baltic Languages: Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian” in the book The Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet in the Choral Rehearsal (Scarecrow Press).

Dr. MacLaughlin Garbes conducts the Everett Chorale, the Seattle’i Eesti Koor (Estonian), and the Sietlas Latviešu koris (Latvian). She was honored to conduct the 2026 KESKUS Estonian Cultural Center Opening Ceremony in Toronto, Canada, and the 2025 ESTO Global Estonian Song Festival in Stockholm, Sweden. She was also the Artistic Director for the 2026 West Coast Estonian Song Festival in San Francisco.

Dr. MacLaughlin Garbes holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the University of Washington and is currently completing a Master of Arts in Music Leadership from the Eastman School of Music.

Heather is the coach of the Philippines National Senior Men’s Curling Team and enjoys running, and cooking with lovely fresh vegetables from local farms.