While I'm on my temporary assignment in the Netherlands, I'm singing with Tonkunstkoor Breda, a group of about 50 members that practices in the lovely Ginneken district of Breda.  The rehearsals are conducted entirely in Dutch.  Since the context is quite clear, this is helping with my Dutch vocabulary.  It's a nice group - this fall will see a concert of Russian compositions.

Prior to our move back to California, I contacted the Oaks Chamber Singers, a by-audition group in Newbury Park, near Thousand Oaks.  I'm now into my third season with the group, having sung the part of the Pirate King in last year's concert presentation of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.  We have performed the Faure Requiem and the Byrd A Cappella Mass in the gothic Chapel of the St. John's Seminary, in Camarillo, and other sacred music at California Lutheran University's Samuelson Chapel.  The Oaks Chamber Singers' repertoire is largely sacred music from the early 19th century and before, so repertoire post-1825 is refreshingly unusual.

In addition to the publicity work I'm doing for Oaks Chamber singers, using the poster layout that I developed for the Kalamazoo Singers, I'm also doing some marketing and publicity for the Ojai Music Festival - comparable in many ways to Kalamazoo's Gilmore Keyboard Festival.  Ojai is an enchanting little town in the foothills north of Ventura, about 45 miles from Thousand Oaks.

I'd been a member of The Kalamazoo Singers since soon after moving to Kalamazoo in the early 1990s. Over the years, I'd become more and more active in the group, becoming a board officer, writing grants, doing publicity, graphic design, and maintaining the Kalamazoo Singers web.  Through the Singers, I've been able to: