Photo Gallery: 2004-2005
Members of the Chorale: Spring 2008
Musical Director:Accompanist: |
Steering Committee:
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Soprano I:
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Soprano II:
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Alto I:
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Alto II:
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Holly Adams |
Alto II
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Holly is entering her third year in the
Women's Chorale and is delighted to be a part of it! A theatre person
by trade, she has exhibited her many talents as a performer, writer,
director, and mask maker. Holly has sung in various shows and choirs
since she was little. Holly thoroughly enjoys anything that involves
her personal superhero, Doreen.
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Doreen Alsen |
Musical Director
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Doreen is the proud owner of a varied and extremely checkered musical past. She graduated magna cum laude from Barrington College with a Bachelor's degree in Music Education, and followed that up with a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from Ithaca College. She studied conducting with Alfred Smith, Frank Marinaccio and Larry Doebler. Her voice teachers include Rosamund Wadsworth, Ed Doucette, Carol McAmis, Gary Race and Peter Sicilian, as well as master classes in Vienna, Austria with Kammersäengerin Sena Jurinac. In addition to leading the Chorale, Doreen teaches singing at CSMA. She has sung featured roles for the Ithaca Opera, the Cabot Street Light Opera (Providence, RI) and the Rhode Island Gilbert and Sullivan Society. While living in Trier, Germany, Doreen taught American musical theater at the Universität Trier, as well as giving a series of lectures and recitals on the connections between American composers and poets. Doreen is the Music Director for All Saints Church in Lansing and serves as the liaison between the Tompkins Region Catholic Churches and the Diocese of Rochester Liturgy Committee. Every summer, Doreen writes the scripts for the very successful CSMA teen musical theater program, Star Search, and serves as its musical director. She is a faculty representative to the CSMA Board of Directors. Doreen is a member of the American Choral Directors’ Association, the Choristers’ Guild, National Association of Pastoral Musicians, the Romance Writers of America, and the Southern Tier Authors of Romance. The first chapter of her first manuscript, Mike's Best Bet, took third place in the San Antonio Romance Author's Merritt Award contest in the long contemporary category. The first chapter of her new book, What Ian Wants, placed fourth in the Valley Forge Romance Writers Great Beginnings contest.
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Michelle Arroyo |
Soprano I
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Michelle joined FLWC in 1996. Her family is from the Boston/Plymouth
area. She moved to Ithaca while in elementary school, and grew up
playing soccer, but also the flute. She started concentrating on voice
in the Contemporary Music Ensemble of
St. Catherine of Siena church.
Michelle took voice lessons until her children came along.... She
continues to serve as occasional soloist and cantor at St. Catherine's.
Michelle enjoys learning to use her voice in different and more
demanding ways. In between singing appearances, Michelle is a
Registered Nurse at the Reconstruction Home in Ithaca.
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Jeannie Barnaba |
Alto I, Steering Committee
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Eugenia (Jeannie) Barnaba has sung with the FLWC for about ten years and
is a member of the Steering Committee. Originally from Binghamton, she
now resides in Ithaca, recently retired from Cornell University as a
program leader in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Jeannie
studies with Doreen Alsen and greatly enjoys singing with Chorale in
Alto I and Soprano II selections. In addition to FLWC, Jeannie is a
regular cantor and a member of the Contemporary Ensemble at St.
Catherine of Siena church in Ithaca.
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Mary Beth Bunge |
Soprano II
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Mary Beth Bunge is delighted to return to the Finger Lakes Women's
Chorale after a 5+ year hiatus. Mary Beth has studied with Randy
Blooding at Ithaca College and has sung
locally with Cornell Chorale, Ithaca College summer choir, and Church of
the Epiphany and Unitarian Church. Vocal roles in the past range from
Hansel in the opera Hansel & Gretel (Twin Cities Interim Opera),
Godspell ensemble (Miami University) to lead vocalist in folk, rock, new
wave, and jazz fusion bands in Minneapolis MN, Ohio and Ithaca. She
sings when she's happy, whether while working at the
Hangar Theatre or while enjoying
her supportive family and friends.
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Carol Lawrence |
Soprano II
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Carol balances her career as a computer programmer for the Cornell
Campus Store with many artistic talents. She enjoys Hip Hop, Tap and
African dancing, woodworking, singing with the Chorale and the Unitarian
Choir and most recently playing percussion with the
Ithaca Concert Band,
just to name a few. Carol has a teenage daughter and son who play
trumpet and French horn respectively, and a husband who plays the bass.
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Janet Morgan |
Soprano I, Steering Committee
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Dr. Jan credits Ithaca soprano Carol Buckley with the idea of studying voice with Doreen Alsen. And what a great idea that was! With Doreen’s skilled guidance and a love of singing, Dr. Jan embarked on a vocal adventure. Her singing career in Ithaca has included solo and ensemble work with the Cornell Savoyards, the First Presbyterian Church Choir, the Ithaca Community Chorus (ICC), the ICC Chamber Singers, and, of course, the Finger Lakes Women’s Chorale. Along with other Chorale members, she had a brief career as a nun in the 2001 Hangar Theater production of the Sound of Music. In her more serious moments, she is a faculty member at TC3 where she chairs the nursing program. |
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Katy Munson |
Soprano II, Webmistress
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The Finger Lakes
Womens' Chorale represents a return to my roots for me, as my first
small group singing experience was in the all-female Ensemble in high
school. Since then I have sung in several choral groups at
Williams
College: the (now defunct) Choral Society, the Concert Choir, and most
notably a classical choral a capella group, the
Elizabethans.
I was a member of the group for three and a half years, and was a
co-director for the last two. Other musical experience includes seventeen
years of flute playing and fifteen years in various church choirs and
music ministries. Currently, I also sing in the choir at
All Saint's Church in
Lansing. I dabble in the more primitive flute forms including
the recorder and have been known to play a few chords on the guitar. I
like to play with vocal arranging and writing obbligatos for the flute.
Since none of this pays enough to put my husband through graduate
school, I work as a technician in a molecular biology lab at
Cornell.
This is my fifth year in the FLWC.
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Betsy Loring Nielsen |
Soprano I
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Betsy Loring Nielsen is an Ithaca native who literally "Sells" Ithaca as
an Associate Broker with Warren Real Estate and is "The Voice in Real
Estate". Singing since the age of 5 that love took her to Eastman School
of Music where she was a voice major. As a professional singer she has
performed in NYC, Boston, Tampa, Rochester, Syracuse and of course her
beloved Ithaca. Her varied credits include musicals, dinner theater,
night clubs, concerts, radio voiceovers and jingles. Married, Mother and
Gramma to 6 her various roles keep her happy and busy.
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Mary Kane Trochim |
Alto II, Steering Committee
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Mary Kane Trochim is one of two current Women’s Chorale members who also sang with the group’s predecessor at CSMA, the Whiton Chorale. As a former Executive Director the Community School of Music and Arts, I’ve continued to stay involved with the arts primarily through my very rewarding experiences with the FLWC. The range of music that allows us to explore eras, cultures and styles from concert to concert is a real pleasure. And the Director’s superior musicianship encourages growth in ours as well.
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Diane Withiam |
Soprano I
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Growing up, Diane
Withiam was involved in the usual school and church choral activities,
also playing piano and French horn during those early years. She was
disappointed by her college choir experience, so there was a time away
before she came back to choral music in 1979 via the CSMA Singers, then
led by Kurt Lichtmann. She remained a member of that group for several
years, through a name change (to Whiton Chorale) and through several
directors (ultimately Jayne Demakos). Since 1982, she has directed
children's and adult choirs at Lansing United Methodist Church. In the
course of her self-imposed program for continuing education as a church
choir director, she always tried to connect with another community group
and found in the Ithaca community fertile ground. After Whiton Chorale,
she sang with
Cornell Chorale (including Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at
Lincoln Center) and with some miscellaneous community projects
(including with Larry Doebler at a service for the Dalai Lama's visit to
Ithaca), until she eventually wound up around 1994 with the Finger Lakes
Women's Chorale. Diane has also had the opportunity for plenty of
vicarious choral experience with three children who were always
musically involved through their school years and in college, both
daughters being part of Finger Lakes Women's Chorale for a time with one
daughter who graduated Ithaca College's music education program. In her
spare time, she maintains a private law practice. "Music washes away
from the soul the dust of everyday life (Berthold Auerbach)." How can
we keep from singing?
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