Tom has been with the Chorale for the past three seasons and the Chorale Ensemble for one season. Tom's foray into the Chorale can best be described as a mid-life crisis activity. A few months prior to joining the Chorale, Tom decided to take voice lessons and see if he liked singing. The verdict is a resounding yes! In addition to singing, Tom began to take piano lessons about two years ago. With just a few more lessons he'll be able to open that piano bar, but until then he's been advised to keep his day job. Speaking of which, Tom is an Earth Sciences professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Although he has been in Colorado for the past ten years, he was born and raised in western Pennsylvania, got his undergraduate degree in Virginia, and his graduate degree in New York.

Paul Acker is in his 3rd year singing with the Chorale. He started after a member, heard him singing in church and thought he had a voice that could be well used in the Chorale. With that encouragement he started singing Balshazar's Feast and hasn't stopped yet.

Besides singing with the Chorale Paul sings in one of the guitar groups at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church here in Boulder. He is an architectural project manager for a small Boulder architectural firm and the trainer for the firm's interns. It is a unique experience to work and coach people who are about the same age as his daughter.

Paul's musical experience has been occasional since the 5th grade, but mainly with orchestral choirs. He has participated in the premiers of 2 pieces and the umpteeumpth performances of pieces such as the Messiah and Beethoven's 9th Symphony. He likes soccer, music that moves and connecting people. He hopes to do some of the other as Vice President, which will mainly mean getting a variety of people to help us raise funds in whatever way they are comfortable.

Sharon has been singing with the chorale since 1997 and has been Treasurer since 1999. She is an import from Chicago, but she has loved living here for the last 8 years. Sharon works for Boulder County in accounting.

Arthur F. Simmons is a Colorado native. He was born and raised in Pueblo and moved to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado where he earned a B.S. degree with a major in Business and minors in Economics and English Literature. He has 18 years banking experience working for major banks in Denver. He has served eight years as an elder, four years as a deacon (2 years as moderator), and four years as treasurer for St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. He sang for seven years with the Chorale, serving as board member, Concert Manager and President. He is also a 30-year member of the Boulder Breakfast Optimist Club. He also sang in the St. Andrew Choir and the Boulder Messiah Chorus. Presently trouble with his vision prevents him from singing or driving. He is the father of four, three daughters and a son, two of whom have musical professions.

The 2000-2001 season marks Laura Gillett's sixth season as director of the Boulder Chorale, and the Boulder Chorale Ensemble. Gillett is a Doctoral Candidate in Choral Literature and Conducting at the University of Colorado where she studies with Drs. Lynn Whitten (emeritus), Joan Conlon, and Lawrence Kaptein. She has directed the University of Colorado Women's Chorus, the Colorado Music Festival Chorus and the Boulder Bach Festival Chorus. Gillett is also the director of music at Sacred Heart of Jesus church in Boulder.

Before coming to Colorado, Laura Gillett earned a bachelor of Music at the University of Michigan in Flute Performance and Music History, and a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Oakland University where she studied with David Daniels. She also earned a second Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the University of Michigan where her teachers included Theodore Morrison, Jerry Blackstone, and Gustav Meier. Gillett has studied with eminent conducting pedagogues Gunther Schuller and Elizabeth Green.

Ms. Gillett is the founding director of the Sterling Heights Choral Society, a Michigan-based choral group dedicated to the performance and recording of twentieth-century choral music. She has also held the post of Assistant Conductor to the Pontiac-Oakland Symphony, and has been a frequent guest conductor of both choruses and orchestras around the U.S.

Christie Evenson, formerly Christie Swoboda, has been a member of the Chorale since the spring of 1998 and has been on the board since the summer of 1999. She grew up in Castle Rock Colorado and started singing in school choirs in the 2^nd grade. She continued singing in organized groups through college.

Christie has lived in the Boulder area since 1988 when she started school at the University of Colorado. She earned a degree in Computer Science from the Engineering department at CU and is now working at a local internet company called netLibrary. She also designed and developed the Chorale web site.

Christie is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Boulder and Denver. In 1984 she decided to make a major life change by moving to Colorado, leaving behind a tenured faculty position at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Her goal was to live near the mountains, her spiritual home and associate with like minded mental health professionals. She adores the geography and climate here and is firmly rooted in Boulder.

She has had a life long connection with and passion for classical music especially opera and choral works. After years of avid listening, playing the flute in the H.S. band and several college courses in music history and appreciation it finally occurred to her that maybe she could learn to sing and express herself in this way. This was a thrilling and scary idea at 48.

After hearing the Boulder Chorale perform she joined them 8 years ago because it was an inclusive, non-audition group - a good place to learn and grow. Singing with the chorale has been a source of great pleasure and joy and a wonderful opportunity to develop vocal skills. She is proud to be associated with a group of this caliber and with the members who give their hearts and minds to the process. She agreed to serve on the board as a way to express her gratitude for all the chorale has given to her. When she is not singing or listening to music she loves to hike, cross country ski and read mysteries

Shane Skriletz is new to the Boulder Chorale, having only been a member for one semester and has just started on the Board. He first started singing in an organized group in 1995 as a member of the Drew University Chorale, and discovered rather quickly how much he enjoyed it. Four years later Shane was President of the same Chorale and graduating with a BA in Music under the tutelage of Garyth Nair. Also in his four years at Drew, he was twice Co-Chair of a 50 member non-profit organization called That Medieval Thing.

Shane moved to Colorado just over a year ago, and currently works for Electronic Data Systems at the StorageTek account.

Jan learned the love of singing as a high pitched boy soprano at a very nineteenth century Catholic orphanage in Toledo, Ohio. He had a few more sporadic tenures in minimalist church choirs and managed to get from an hourly job at General Motors into night school at the University of Detroit. He then went on to Medical School at Wayne State University in Detroit where miraculously a classmate had just left the student Chorus directors job at University of Michigan to go back to medical school. They had four years of the best medical school glee club in the world. He taught them things like pitch over lunches, and sometimes in the dissecting rooms! They may have had no time for the real basics like reading music, but they had more fun than anybody else in the whole world of medicine. Jan went on to internship and residency at UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and University of Cincinnati, thinking he was too busy to sing anymore, a big mistake. When Jan arrived in Boulder in 1968 it was directly from Washington DC, where he had been Medical Director for the Peace Corps. This was after spending two years in Central and South America as regional medical officer for the same great org. He did little singing those years but a lot of whistling in the dark on jungle trails etc. especially during violent revolutions. He did family practice fourteen years in Boulder then moved into occupational medicine when it became apparent sports and work injuries are the same injury-but everybody with a work injury has a job!

Jan and his wife Mary -but mostly her- have raised 7 kids here, none of whom sing or play doctor. They moved to northeast Boulder into the Fraser meadows area 7 years ago, and he waited until 2 years ago to join BC. He feels the chance to be conducted and taught by a real professional and the fellowship of alike minded but diverse group has been wonderful. He has been taught how to extend that Bass up another full octave from where it lay, and so much about reading music, breathing, etc, in a short time. If BC had not been a "no audition" group he would have never shown up.

Currently Jan and Mary live in a townhouse in Pawnee Meadows. He is a full time Physician at the DynCorp occupational Health clinic at the Rocky Flats "Environmental Technology Site", and has a busy part time practice in Occupational medicine consulting, almost every night but Tuesdays, of course. To put it mildly, he has a "heartfelt" appreciation for what BC has given him, and hopes to help spread the good news to others. He is also still a delegate from Boulder county medical society to the Colorado Medical Society, and Active in the American College Of Occupational Medicine, except on Tuesday nights.