Members

Thomas Ayres A recording by the New York Pro Musica - "Ayres, Madrigals, and Dances" - started Tom on a lifelong interest in early music performance, both as a singer and as an instrumentalist. He works as a human factors consultant, investigating accidents, but prefers riding a bicycle.

Janet Bailey An avid a cappella singer since high school, Janet Bailey sang with William Mahrt’s Early Music Singers at Stanford, then studied and sang jazz while living in New York. In San Francisco, she has sung with choral groups including Lacuna Arts. A former freelance journalist, Janet leads corporate workshops on presentation skills and on how to write emails that don’t waste people’s time. She likes riding her bike around San Francisco, taking longer routes to avoid hills.

Alexis Caloza Alexis began singing early music in college with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and the Chamber Singers. Following graduation, he sang in a number of Boston- and New York-based groups, including the Boston Choral Ensemble, Music Sacra, and the Choral Society of Grace Church. He spent the last eight years exploring contemporary choral music with the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco before joining Tactus and returning to his early music roots. He pays the bills by investigating white collar crime.

Ron Cohen Ron Cohen for decades had a day job as a physicist, and crammed in as much music as he could during off hours. Havring retired from his physics gig in 2013, he has filled much of the freed time with performance (vocal as well as trumpet, renaissance cornetto, and recorder) and behind-the-scenes work with musical groups. In addition to Tactus, Ron has sung with Bay Area Classical Harmonies (B.A.C.H.), San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir, and the Russian vocal ensemble Slavyanka. He plays instrumental music with a number of bay area ensembles, including, as a founding member, the renaissance wind band Mane Musica.

Susan Draeger A lifelong and avid choral singer, Susan is happy to be singing early music with Tactus. A veterinarian, working as medical director at VCA Albany Animal Hospital, she devotes as much time as possible to pursing her singing hobby. She recently earned a Master’s Degree in Vocal Performance, with a focus on vocal chamber music, from San Francisco State University. Susan also sings with and is a soloist for San Francisco Bach Choir, Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble, and the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group. She is Creative Director and soprano for the vocal jazz quartet, The Dulcet Four. She invites anyone reading this to join her in a board game!

Erica Dunkle Erica is a fascinating person. You will get to know about her soon.

Carol Henri Carol Henri's love of choral singing started with a fantastic High School choir and Madrigal group and continued with the UC Berkeley University Chorus. She has been a regular member of the Oakland Symphony Chorus for many years and also currently sings with the SF Bach Choir. In addition, she has sung with the SF Symphony Chorus, the SF Midsummer Mozart festival chorus and the SF Choral Society. She has worked for many years at IBM as a Technical Sales Specialist.

Kristine Johnson Kristine grew up in Seoul, Korea, in a military community based in Yongsan Garrison, which shuttered its gates in 2018. According to her parents, she’s been singing since she was a baby. Her choir experience began in elementary school, until shyness got the best of her; she didn’t take up choral music again until joining the Seoul American High School Show Choir her junior year. She has also been a member of the Mount Holyoke Chorale, Glee Club, Chamber Singers, and V-8s a cappella group. Her interest in early music began while studying Computer Science and Philosophy at Wesleyan University, where she sang with Collegium Musicum for three years, singing the works of Byrd, Tallis, Purcell, and Victoria, among others. As a non-music major, she was tickled pink to receive the Lipsky Prize her senior year--an award that came with actual money! She also performed in student productions and an opera and oratorio ensemble, and especially cherishes her brief time singing in a small senior thesis group. More recently, she has performed Faure’s Requiem (a favorite), and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the San Francisco Choral Society. Fun fact: she took third place in an amateur opera competition in Hawaii.

Nick Jones Nick Jones moved to the Bay Area in 2017 after retiring as a professor of English at Oberlin College in Ohio. Since then, he has enjoyed teaching courses on literature for OLLI (Osher LifeLong Learning) and translating Renaissance Italian texts (soon to see print is his translation of Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia, from about 1485). Nick has served on the board of Early Music America, the national support and advocacy group for medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music and musicians. He loves the vibrant early music community in the Bay Area, singing with Tactus, Gallimaufry, and the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group, as well as playing recorder, violin, and viola da gamba whenever he gets a chance—especially at the East Bay’s monthly Early Music Open Mic. Nick reviews music (both early and classical) for San Francisco Classical Voice.

Cathleen Josaitis Cathleen was inspired to start singing while in graduate school for microbiology, when she saw a scientist friend perform in a madrigal concert. Having no singing experience but much persistence, she was admitted to the University Chorus on her third audition. She’s been at it ever since, currently singing with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the choir of St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, and the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group in addition to Tactus. Her past choruses include the San Francisco City Chorus, Lacuna Arts, Mostly Motets, and Southern California's Pacific Chorale. She loves a good "polyphony camp" and has participated in the Tallis Scholars Summer School in Seattle, the Canadian Renaissance Music Summer School in Vancouver, and the San Francisco Early Music Society Medieval/Renaissance Workshop. She studies voice with Katherine McKee.

Sam Lederer Sam Lederer grew up playing the violin, but joined a choir during his first year in undergrad and had a transformative encounter with Josquin that has kept him singing since. As a member of groups in New Orleans, Boston, Ithaca, and the Bay Area, he has always wished for more Renaissance polyphony in the repertoire—until he joined Tactus! Sam delights in creating the ephemeral beauty of music, and similarly that of food and drink. He is renowned for his pastas and cocktails (if he does say so himself), and does theoretical physics to pay the bills.

Jason Leith Jason Leith began his music-making as an oboist, switching to voice as his primary instrument at Williams College in Massachusetts where he studied chemistry, after having gotten fed up with making reeds. He sang in the (mostly) Early Music group, the Elizabethans, at Williams, and then in a variety of church choirs in Cambridge, UK, in Boston, and now sings in sight-singing group Coro d'Amici and the Schola Cantorum at St. Mark's Episcopal church, both in Berkeley. He enjoys composing, microtonality, and simultaneous cross-relations.

Jane McDougle Music has always been an important part of Jane’s life. She is a choral singer, has been a church choir director for many years, as well as a teacher of voice and classroom music. She has a DMA (early music, voice) from Stanford University, and particularly loves singing Renaissance and early Baroque music in small ensembles. Jane has sung with a number of groups over the years including Clare College Choir, Cambridge, with John Rutter; Horniman Singers, London, with Sebastian Forbes; Stanford Early Music Singers with William Mahrt, and the Theater of Voices, with Paul Hillier. After needing to focus on being an Episcopal priest in San Francisco for the last ten years, she is now delighted to have the time to reclaim her joy in singing. Jane also enjoys spending time with her husband, her three small grandsons, her enthusiastic dog, Poppy, cooking and gardening.

Luciana Miranda With a remarkable lifelong journey that commenced in early childhood, Luciana has sculpted a harmonious legacy as a seasoned vocalist. Emigrating from Brazil to the US at the age of two, she displayed an innate musical ability while singing to 8 track tapes of John Denver and the Carpenters. Her musical odyssey commenced at the age of 10 with an accidental serenade into the world of performance when recruited to sing in a production of The Nutcracker. In high school in Austin, TX she participated in competitive choir and achieved a spot in the All State choir her junior year. At the University of Colorado Boulder her musical palette expanded, attuning to the intricate notes of Early Music. From 2004 - 2018 the Schola Cantorum at St. Mary Magdalen in Berkeley led her ascendency as a soloist and cantor, lending her voice to performances as well as weddings and funerals in 12 languages including Russian, Armenian and Swahili. Under the esteemed baton of Rita Lilly, she participated in three seasons with the Mills Girls Choir. Amidst arias and sonnets, her appreciation for gourmet delights and wine also flourishes, harmonizing the sensory pleasures of music and culinary artistry. Her lifelong pursuit woven through years of dedication and passion stands testament to her enduring commitment to the enchanting world of song.

Patricia Saura Patricia Saura was born in Paris and grew up in Madrid, where she developed a passion for early music as a young teenager. Her father, a scholar, builder and tuner of historical keyboards, took her to many concerts of Spanish Renaissance music, where he often was organ or harpsichord tuner. After moving to the US, Patricia worked for 30 years as an interpreter at UCSF Medical Center. She earned a Bachelor's degree in music from Cal State Hayward and has sung in a number of choirs over the past 25 years, including Coro Hispano de San Francisco, Sacred and Profane, and Lacuna Arts Ensemble.

Susan St. Martin Susan made her conducting debut in the 4th grade, when she directed the 4th grade recorder group in "Frère Jacques" in canon. Susan has taken one formal music theory class in her life, during her last semester at MIT, where she got her undergraduate degree in Biology. Otherwise, she credits her school music teachers and choral directors over the years with all the music theory she knows. Susan is a Bioarchitect and Interim Lab Manager at Amber Bio, where she works on curing diseases with therapeutic RNA editing. Other interests include knitting, figs, whisk(e)y, and the occasional lamb kebab.

Richard Stanton Richard Stanton is a professor of finance and real estate at U.C. Berkeley. He started singing in choirs as a child in London then took a brief 25-year break, during which he moved to the U.S. More recently, he has sung with the SF Bach Choir and its chamber chorus, Concentus; the SF Choral Society; and Mostly Motets, where he first met and sang with several of the other members of Tactus. He has been singing with Tactus since Spring 2019.

Susan Swerdlow Mezzo/alto Susan Swerdlow has enjoyed singing in Tactus since 2017, and she is currently the group's Associate Conductor. Upon retiring after several fulfilling decades teaching choral music at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, she threw herself into singing as never before. In addition to Tactus, she does choral and solo work with the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group and Marin Baroque. Susan, who holds an M.M. in choral conducting from Temple University, directs the Women's Antique Vocal Ensemble (WAVE) and was a Tactus Co-Director during the transitional 2018-2019 season. She trained the choruses for many productions at Berkeley Opera (now West Edge Opera) and Oakland Opera Theater, and is a former director of Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus.

Kenneth Tom Kenneth Tom has performed as a soloist and ensemble singer in concerts and theatre productions in Berkeley (UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus), Göttingen (St. Jakobi Kantorei), Boston (New England Conservatory Chorus, Opera Theatre, Collegium Musicum), San Diego (San Diego State University Collegium Musicum, San Diego Opera Chorus, La Jolla Symphony, St. James by- the-Sea Episcopal Church) and Orange County (Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony). An Emeritus Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at California State University Fullerton, his teaching and research focus on voice acoustics and physiology and clinical voice therapy. He co-founded CSUF’s Transgender Voice and Communication Clinic. In his clinical work as a speech-language pathologist specializing in vocal rehabilitation, he integrates evidence-based voice/breathwork, movement/somatic learning approaches (yoga, Feldenkrais® method), manual therapy (myofascial release, craniosacral therapy, acupressure), and theatre voice and singing techniques. Kenneth is a San Francisco native and his on-going quest is to bake better pies.

Barb Westree Barb Westree has been singing since she was a toddler. She has previously sung with San Francisco Bach Choir, California Bach Society, Masterworks Chorale, and Lacuna Arts. She is a founding member of Tactus. In addition to Tactus, she currently sings with Women's Antique Vocal Ensemble and Berkeley Bach Cantata group. Ms. Westree is retired from environmental consulting where she provided technical support for environmental impairment liability litigation. Upon retiring, she worked as a garden designer. Besides singing early and Baroque music, her pastimes are birding and gardening, wherein she strives to grow orange dahlias. She enjoys introducing Tactus members to birding.

Melike Yersiz Melike began singing and playing piano before she can remember, and has been in a choral singer since 4th grade. She went on to get degrees in Chemical-Biological Engineering and Music Composition in college, where she continued her choral singing and exploration of early and new music. Melike joined Tactus SF in summer of 2017, and is heavily involved behind the scenes with the choir’s administration, website, and publicity. She also sings with International Orange Chorale and dabbles in composition in her spare time. In her professional life, Melike investigates industrial chemical accidents around the nation to educate the public and to prevent similar incidents from recurring.