Biography

SFS Chorus member since: 2004  

Hometown: Torrance, CA

Music schools I attended: R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts, USC Thornton School of Music

Began singing: At age 26

Musical inspirations: Hearing evensong while in graduate school at King’s College, Cambridge. 

If I were not a professional singer, I might be a: Writer, journalist, history professor, lawyer, diplomat, professional violist

My favorite composers are: Perotin, Ockeghem, Josquin, Victoria, Tallis, Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Britten, Jonathan Harvey

My favorite vocal works are: Dufay’s Missa Se la Face Ay Pale; Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua; Victoria’s Requiem; Tallis’s Mass for four voices, Lamentations of Jeremiah, and Spem in alium; Bach’s Mass in B minor, St. John and St. Matthew Passions, Cantatas Nos. 82 and 140; Handel’s Messiah; Mozart’s Requiem and Don Giovanni; operas of Verdi, Puccini, and late operas of Wagner; Britten’s Peter Grimes and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo; lieder of Schubert and Hugo Wolf.

When I’m not working, I enjoy: Reading; driving on windy mountain roads; biking; playing the viola; attending the opera, theater, movies, and live performance generally, especially jazz; taking long trips to foreign lands; dancing; hiking; visiting museums; shooting pool; playing ping pong and air hockey; spending time in Los Angeles; looking at buildings; visiting with family; eating and drinking well in the company of good friends; and eating and cooking Mexican food.

Recent reading: Turn of the Screw, by Henry James; Angels in America, by Tony Kushner; “Birches,” by Robert Frost

On my CD player/iPod: Esperanza Spalding, Chamber Music Society; Chick Corea, Return to Forever; Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kinsmen; Benny Goodman, The Birth of Swing; The Kinks, The Kink Kronicles; Graham Parsons, Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels; Joanna Newsom, Milk-Eyed Mender; Neko Case, Middle Cyclone; Sam Cooke, 30 Greatest Hits; Paul Simon’s So Beautiful So What; John Fahey’s Return of the Repressed; Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots; Mississippi John Hurt, 1928 Sessions; Luke Vibert, Big Soup; The Orb, U. F. Orb;  John Adams’s Shaker Loops;  Ligeti, Piano Concerto. 

Favorite things to do in the Bay Area: Hiking in Muir Woods, Point Reyes, Big Sur, Yosemite, or Pinnacles National Monument; riding my bike along the Embarcadero; watching Giants’ games at AT&T Park; driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to the windy roads of Tiburon; wine tasting in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties; riding the cable car to Grace Cathedral; enjoying the views from Coit Tower and Tank Hill; exploring the museums and renting a boat on Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park; browsing at Green Apple, City Lights, and Moe’s Books; watching movies at the Castro, Paramount, Stanford, and Roxie theatres and Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive; dinner at Zuni, Boulevard, Burma Superstar or La Taqueria; drinks at Farley Bar on Cavallo Point, Bix, Buckeye Roadhouse, and Top of the Mark; club dancing at DNA Lounge, Space 550, and the End Up; high tea at Neiman Marcus’ Rotunda, Palace Hotel’s Garden Court and the Fairmont; music performances at San Francisco Opera, SF Jazz, Yoshis’s jazz club, Oakland; attending theatrical productions of Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, and Cutting Ball Theatre.