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 been singing 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 and medical director at VCA Albany Animal Hospital by day, she devotes as much time as possible to pursing her singing hobby. In 2016, once her children were grown, she returned to school, and after satisfying the musical requirements for admission to the Masters of Music program at San Francisco State University, she did several semesters of graduate coursework in Vocal Performance, with a focus on vocal chamber music. Susan also sings with SF Bach Choir and Women Sing, in addition to her vocal jazz quartet, The Dulcet Four. She invites anyone reading this to join her in a board game!

• 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.

• Nick Jones

  Nicholas Jones is a retired professor of English (Oberlin College) and a member of the board of Early Music America. He sings and plays recorder, violin, and viola da gamba in a number of early music groups in the Bay Area.

• 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.

• Abigail Ramsden

  Abigail Ramsden started her singing career at age 7 with the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Since then she has found a musical home in many fine choirs including as a founding member of Musae, with the California Bach Society, and with the Choir of Lincoln College, Oxford. She is a graduate of Williams College and UC Hastings (new name TBD) College of the Law, and works in environmental policy with The Nature Conservancy's California Chapter. In her free time she wrangles a tween and a standard poodle, travels the world with her husband, and encourages people to eat more vegetables.

• Barbara Ruvolo

  Barbara has sung continuously since moving to California from New York State in 1978, beginning with the Palo Alto Oratorio Society in 1979, taking breaks to nurse her new daughter, while performing in their annual Elizabethan Dinner events. She has sung with many Bay Area groups, notably with Schola Cantorum under Greg Waite, Musica Sacra under John Kendall Bailey, Chora Nova and the California Bach Society under Paul Flight, perfoming with CBS for 7 years; Slavyanka, and Cantare con Vivo (now Cantare). Barbara studied voice with Diane F. Mauch and Karen Clark. She worked professionally as a licensed marriage and family therapist with the Santa Clara County Health and Hospital System, as a clinician and manager with Public Health and Mental Health county-wide programs. Barbara is currently the President of the San Francisco Early Music Society. Barbara has degrees from the College of Wooster and Union Theological Seminary, NYC as well as many professional certifications.

• Patricia Saura

  Patricia Saura grew up in Madrid, Spain, and developed a passion for early music as a young teenager when her father took her to many concerts of Spanish Renaissance keyboard music where he often served as organ or harpsichord tuner. 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. She works as a medical interpreter in San Francisco.

• 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 research assistant at Sangamo Therapeutics, where she works on curing diseases with therapeutic gene modification. 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 summer 2017. Upon retiring recently 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 sings with the San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir, does choral and solo work with the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group, and is a member of a Renaissance trio. Susan, who holds an M.M. in choral conducting from Temple University, trained the choruses for many productions at Berkeley Opera (now West Edge Opera) and Oakland Opera Theater, and is a former music director of Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus. She was a Tactus Co-Director during the transitional 2018-2019 season. She is currently the Associate Conductor of Tactus SF.

• 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 is retired from environmental consulting. Beginning her musical life in high school, she always sang in big choruses. While the Verdi and Mozart Requiems are great works, Barb now derives her musical joy from small ensembles and Early Music. Besides Tactus, Barb also sings with Lacuna Arts in San Francisco.

• 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 learn from them and to prevent similar incidents from recurring.