Long Beach Chorale and Chamber Orchestra

Madison is delighted to be joining the Chorale for her first season. An experienced classical soprano, Madison has been singing since she was a young child. Music has always been a large part of her life. She was the drum major of her high school marching band her senior year, as well as the recipient of the National Choral Directors Award. In college Madison had the honor of performing with many great musicians, the likes of which included the Pacific Symphony and the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra.

When she’s not singing, Madison works as a Commercial Account Manager for Waste Management. In her spare time she likes to attend concerts and hang out with her dog.

Madison looks forward to a wonderful season with the LBC!

To “adopt” Madison as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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Ryan Smith, 24, grew up with the soulful sounds of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Bobby McFerrin ringing in his ears. From an early age, not even his parents could keep him quiet. Whether it was piano, saxophone or pots and pans, Ryan was always making a racket. In high school, he played saxophone with the marching and performance band. But his high school, Napa High School in the like-named city, had an unmistakably popular choir program with nearly a quarter of the 2,500 person student body involved. The vibrant vocal student body lured him to sing. He held out until his junior year when he auditioned for the performance choir.

Fast forward to now, Ryan is a graduate of CSULB’s Kinesiology program with a Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise Science. He has applied to Physical Therapy schools around the nation and is eagerly waiting for a response. After graduating college he realized there was a lack of singing and sought out a choir. In the wake of witnessing LBC’s grand performance of Bach’s Magnificat he knew LBC was the right group. He auditioned in the Spring 2013 season to be a baritone and performed Orff’s Carmina Burana with LBC. He considers himself lucky to have found the Long Beach Chorale and sing in a group with such talent.

To “adopt” Ryan as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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Annemieke Farrow is delighted to join the Long Beach Chorale this season! She appeared in her first musical at age 6, discovering a passion that developed into a successful career in New York City after graduating from college with a BFA in Acting. While performing in many theatrical productions and movies, she was also recruited to join the Young People’s Chorus of NYC. Highlights of performing with YPC included singing “Carmina Burana” at Carnegie Hall along with 8 other choirs and a full orchestra from the Netherlands, and traveling to Bulgaria for the “Festival of Light” choral festival.

In 2005, Annemieke began volunteering for the ASPCA and discovered a new passion: dog training. She moved to Long Beach in 2007 to accept a job as an Animal Behavior and Training Specialist at the spcaLA and became a Certified Professional Dog Trainer later that year. From this position, she moved into the Humane Education Department at the spcaLA, where she ran violence-prevention programs for at-risk youth and helped to develop an intervention program for juvenile animal cruelty offenders, which is now court-mandated for many offenders in Los Angeles County. Although Annemieke left her full-time position this year in order to return to school, she still enjoys teaching dog training classes for students and the public through the spcaLA, as well as helping private clients with their dogs’ behavior.

In her (quite scarce) free-time, Annemieke also enjoys swing dancing and supporting her swing-dance team The Fly Rights, 4-time winners of the National Jitterbug Championships and this year’s winners of the International Lindy Hop Championships!

To “adopt” Annemieke as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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Meet Michael Kellogg. He’s your friendly neighborhood baritone…who’s been known to masquerade as a tenor from time to time. He joined the LBC last year with the Bach Magnificat. He’s been living in Long Beach for that same amount of time because one of the first things he did upon arriving here was seek out a choir. Michael’s been singing in various choirs for 20 years and hopes to stay with the LBC for a long time.

To “adopt” Michael as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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Kathy Griff is a first year member of the Long Beach Chorale, and is happy to be singing with this fine choir and its exceptionally talented conductor, Eliza Rubenstein.  It is a joy to be immersed in choral music again after spending several years pursuing other interests.

She is now retired after serving thirty-seven years as a high school choral director.  Kathy earned a B.A and M.A. in choral music education at CSULB, and also did graduate studies in folklore at UCLA.

Since retiring, Kathy has enjoyed attending Friday mid-afternoon series concerts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and going out to lunch with other retirees (celebrating our freedom from routine).  Other performing groups she follows are Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Opera, and South Coast Repertory Theater. She has attended Hollywood Bowl summer concerts with old friends since 1973.

She is passionate about weekly ballroom, Latin, and salsa dance classes.  Since getting an Australian Shepherd puppy earlier this year, she now has begun training and attending dog shows, entering a new world of dog lovers.

Among her favorite popular music performers, she listens to and attends concerts by Tony Bennett, Willie Nelson, The Mavericks, K.D. Lang, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, Al Jarreau, Los Lobos, and Harry Connick Jr.

To “adopt” Kathy as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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Bill Eldon, one of our low, low basses, has been singing with the Long Beach Chorale for somewhere around ten years. He can’t remember exactly–probably because the time he’s spent diligently and strenuously hauling our risers and music stands all over creation has all blurred together. Bill is our Vice President and the head of our Performance Venue Realization team (formerly the Heavy Lifting Crew), and at times, has been its only laboring member. He’s a champ, through and through.

By day, Bill is a field claims trainer with the Bristol West division Farmers Insurance Group. In his off hours, he’s an avid rower who assists with learn-to-row lessons and both competes in and serves as a US Rowing Referee at local and not-so-local rowing events. “I came to rowing late in life as a parent volunteer for my son’s high school rowing program,” he explains. “The high point of my rowing career was competing in several events in the World Masters Rowing Championships in St. Catherines, Ontario in 2010 and coming away with a medal in one of my team boats, a mixed masters’ quad with two men and two women.” That’s good, Bill. You need those muscles to lug the risers, right? Wink, wink! Poor Bill. We’re looking for minions for him.

Bill at the June 2013 “Great Balls of Fire” Concert

Vocally, Bill has come a long way since his youth, when he sang as a soprano in fifth grade. He didn’t sing in a choir again until college, where he joined the chorus as well as a sixteen-voice chapel choir that performed Bach cantatas every semester. Later, he joined his church choir. It was in a local church choir that he met fellow Long Beach Chorale member Alan Caddick, who encouraged him to join us. “Before I joined the Chorale, I was asked to be part of a pick-up choir to help audition candidates for a new director and was thrilled both that they chose Eliza from the group and that she then accepted me into the Chorale, the first group I ever auditioned for,” Bill says. Sounds like it was all meant to be! Since then, he has recruited several more members of his church choir and, most recently, his wife, Beth, and son, Matthew, to the Chorale.

Bill’s favorite Long Beach Chorale performances have been the Brahms Requiem, the Bach Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat, and last year’s performances of Haydn’s Creation. “I love being in the group and making music with others. I am not a soloist or even a performer by nature, so the Chorale lets me be a part of great music. Singing under Eliza has also greatly improved my sight reading and my vocal skills in general,” Bill says. His favorite music to listen to is that of the Baroque period, especially Bach, but he also enjoys everything from the Middle Ages and Renaissance madrigals through They Might Be Giants, The Real McKenzies and anything in between. Just no Broadway or country, sorry!

To “adopt” Bill as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

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This is Sharon’s second season with the Long Beach Chorale. However, she’s been a musician and music-lover all her life. She studied voice privately for fifteen years, worked with a small opera company, has sung with various chorales and church choirs, and enjoys both solo and group singing. She also enjoys noodling around with her Appalachian dulcimer which she built in college. Sharon is delighted to be back singing with a great chorale, since all musical efforts had to be put on hold while she worked her way through seminary. Sharon loves all types of music; walk in on any day and you might find Dr. Demento, Copeland, Verdi, Taizé, or Sondheim on the CD player.

Sharon with her mouse puppet, Eek (so called because of course people say “Eek!” when they see a mouse, so he thinks it’s his name).

Outside of Chorale, Sharon can be found at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and School in Downey, where she is assistant priest, school chaplain, and supplemental music teacher. You might also spot her at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, where she teaches patrons about Renaissance clothing production and demonstrates various forms of weaving, lace knitting, and Elizabethan backchat. Sharon can often be found with a sewing or crafting project somewhere nearby, and most recently has been designing and sewing clergy shirts in fabrics other than basic black.

A student of languages and linguistics, Sharon enjoys inflicting puns on an unsuspecting public (just ask any Chorale member!) and collecting books, especially first editions of weird stuff. It has been fairly said that Sharon and her husband Mike live in a library with a kitchen and bedroom attached. Sharon and Mike also enjoy baseball games, science fiction conventions, craft festivals, and tending to their fur-children, Shadow, the cat and Basil Rathbun, the rabbit.

To “adopt” Sharon as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

Thanks for supporting the Long Beach Chorale!

Amaridis, who goes by Ammo, is a soprano who started singing with the chorale last season. Our audience members may remember her best for her show-stopping rendition of “Glitter and Be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, which she performed the 2011 June concert, Songs of the American Stage. She works by day at a real estate company in Long Beach, but “in my heart, I am a singer,” she says. “I love performing.”

From the time she started singing with a children’s church choir at the age of 5, she’s known it was in her blood.  “Do I go to Broadway or the Met?” was her big dilemma.  It led her to graduated in vocal performance with an emphasis in opera from CSULB.

Ammo has high praise for Eliza Rubenstein, “I love that Eliza focuses on every aspect of the music. We’re not just learning how the piece goes, we are learning the different perspectives of phrasing, style, the history of the piece, and given an understanding of the theory structure of each piece. All this to make us better performers. That is the epitome of artistry, isn’t it? THAT is why I love her.”

 When she is not singing, she loves to attend concerts, especially enjoying the HD performances streamed from the Met.  We have heard rumors that she enjoys a wide variety of music, including everything from Bruce Springsteen to Shelby Lynn, Patty Griffin, Stevie Wonder, Lyle Lovette, Elvis Costello to Philip Glass to Boccherini, Vivaldi, and Mozart.  Yeah, that pretty much covers the spectrum, Ammo!

We’re so glad to have you in the soprano section, Ammo!

To “adopt” Ammo as part of our Adopt a Singer program, click here:

To read more singer profiles in our Adopt a Singer campaign, click here.

Thanks for supporting the Long Beach Chorale!