Members

Dr. Alexandra Grabarchuk is a Ukrainian-born conductor and musicologist. Alex is the current Artistic Director of the San Gabriel Valley Choral Company, as well as the Director of Choral Activities at Whittier College. She has previously served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Choral Direction & Musicology at Earlham College, and has held teaching positions at UCLA, Chapman University, Chaffey College, Mt. SAC, and the Claremont University Consortium. When Alex is not exploring new choral music with C3LA, she is playing toy piano, kazoo, and singing wacky pop-art songs as one-half of duo GuitAria, alongside Los Angeles guitarist Peter Yates. www.alexgrabarchuk.com

Soprano Amy Waters sings professionally with a number of ensembles in the Los Angeles area, including Areté Vocal Ensemble and the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, where she acts as soprano section leader and Assistant Conductor. After earning her B.A. in Music and French Studies from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, Amy worked professionally as a vocalist and conductor in Portland before relocating to Los Angeles in 2017. In addition to her musical career, Amy is an EMT and works as a first responder in the South Bay. https://awatersmusic.wixsite.com/amywaters

Alto Carol Binion currently sings with the following choruses: LA Master Chorale, Jouyssance, The Golden Bridge, C3LA, LASchola, and Clarion Singers. She has worked with conductors Grant Gershon, Essa Pekka Salonen, Bramwell Tovey, Robert Shaw, Michael Tilson Thomas and Gustavo Dudamel among others. Carol studied voice/movement with Meredith Monk, and puppeteered with Basil Twist for several years. By day, Carol is an Emmy-winning costume designer and builder, currently specializing in stop-motion animation.

David Rentz is Associate Professor of Music at Chaffey College, Adjunct Professor and head of the conducting program at Claremont Graduate University, and Music Director of the Orchestra Collective of Orange County. David has received fellowships and grants from the Yale alumni Ventures program and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and, in 2015, was named guest professor at Xiamen University (China). B.Mus., Washington University in Saint Louis; M.M, University of Wisconsin-Madison; M.M.A. and D.M.A., Yale University School of Music.

Drew Corey is a composer, vocalist and performance artist who creates clean, minimalist works while not losing a sense of warmth. She creates this “warm minimalism” using voices, drones, her signature extended piano technique, floating melodies and large harmonic textures. Her practice focuses on human connectivity and the visceral nature of certain physical and sonic stimuli. She creates works for choir, chamber ensemble, solo performance, voice and piano, as well as interdisciplinary works for orchestra, theater and dance. She received her BFA in Composition from the California Institute of the Arts in 2016 and is a founding member of C3LA. www.drewcorey.com

Jeff Greif, physicist by training and avocational French hornist, took up singing at age 30 in order to sing Lieder and chamber music. He has performed all three major Schubert song cycles and works by many other art song composers, was the Evangelist in both the Bach St. Matthew and St. John Passions, and participated in several choral groups, including 8 seasons with the LA Master Chorale. Besides C3LA, he sings with the Jouyssance Early Music Ensemble and Los Robles Master Chorale. In November 2018, he gives the first full performance on the West Coast of Matthew Aucoin's "Merrill Songs".

Before coming to LA in August 2019, Kirk Averitt was Director of Choral Music at Beaver Country Day School and The Congregational Church of Weston in Boston, MA. He has worked with choral ensembles around the globe. In 2019, his choirs from BCDS shared a week in residence with ensembles at Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba. Later in July, Kirk co-founded the Viatores Mundi Choral Workshop in Bol, Croatia. He holds an MM in Choral Conducting from UMass Amherst and a BM in Music Ed. from Lipscomb University.

Matthew Scherb has always derived great joy and sanity from singing. Before his recent move to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, he sang for years with the San Francisco Choral Artists, International Orange Chorale, and Resound Ensemble, all of which were devoted to fostering and performing new choral music. By day, Matthew is a lawyer and handles appellate litigation for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office.

Marcus Carline received a BM in Jazz Studies (Vocal Performance) and Composition in 2015 from Cal State, Long Beach. As such, jazz heavily influences his compositional work, particularly in the use of extended harmony and a desire for more improvisational thinking from performers. In addition to C3LA, he also currently performs new choral works with Choral Arts Initiative, a cappella music with Westbeat, and modern electronic music with the Los Angeles Electroacoustic Ensemble, of which he is a cofounder. His downtime is often filled with mixing recordings and watching anime.

Morgan Woolsey is a musicologist, performer, and songwriter. She holds a PhD in Musicology from UCLA and her research explores the role film music plays in cultural processes of liberation. Since coming to Los Angeles from New York in 2009, she has performed with Jouyssance, Vox Femina Los Angeles, and the UCLA Early Music Ensemble. She has also worked on a smattering of projects for film and television as a singer and composer. Morgan is currently a lecturer in Musicology and LGBTQ Studies at UCLA, and teaches music appreciation at Chaffey College.

Vera Frances Lugo is a vocal artist from San Juan Capistrano, California. Active in many ensembles throughout Southern California, she works as a professional chorister, session singer, and jazz vocalist. She enjoys utilizing her large vocal range in a variety of musical settings and performs with social justice choir Tonality, Memberz Only ‘80s cover band, and Seraphim Vocal Ensemble, to name a few. In her spare time, Vera can be found singing harmonies with The Beatles and arranging songs on a dinky toy piano. www.veralugo.com

Alice Dryden is a Los Angeles-based composer and mezzo-soprano. She directs the kindergarten-8th grade music program at Everest Value School in downtown Los Angeles. Active in Los Angeles area choral music, she is also a member of Nova Vocal Ensemble and Vox Femina Los Angeles and is proud to be joining C3LA. She is an alumna of the Lawrence Conservatory of Music (B.M. in Voice Performance and Music Education) and CUNY Brooklyn College (M.M. in Composition), where she studied with Professor Tania León. She is also an alumna of the EAMA-Nadia Boulinger Institute program in Paris.

A long-time hobby musician, Alyssa Seibert currently sings with the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church choir and has previously sung with Nova Vocal Ensemble and Angel City Chorale. She is originally from Maryland and earned a minor in Vocal Performance from the University of Maryland College Park. She is the Social Impact and Sustainability Manager at Imperfect Foods and a passionate yogi and sustainability nerd.

A Los Angeles native, mezzo-soprano Ariana Stultz received her BA in Vocal Performance from Bard College and completed her Masters at University of Southern California in Vocal Arts and Opera. Ms. Stultz has received multiple awards, including the Spotlight Awards at the Aspen Music Festival for composition and for vocal performance, the AEIOU Scholarship and the Opera Buffs Scholarship. Along with performing leading roles at opera companies in New York and Los Angeles, Ms. Stultz has sung in choirs such as Tonality, The Verdi Chorus, and the National Children's Chorus. Along with singing Ms. Stultz is a painter and composer. Find her art at @mint.verbena.

American composer, singer, conductor David Avshalomov composes in a Modern Romantic style; works for solo and chamber instruments, orchestra, band, chorus, from songs and incidental pieces to oratorio and opera, often on commission. Performed across the US, in Europe, Russia, South America, the Far East; recorded on Albany and Naxos. Won numerous competitions; grants. Veteran bass chorister, soloist; recent opera roles. B.A in Music from Harvard, D.M.A. in Conducting at U. Washington; studies at Aspen and Tanglewood (Bernstein, Schuller, Ozawa). Led orchestras and choruses on both coasts, guest conducted widely, toured in Europe and the Far East. www.davidavshalomov.com

David García Saldaña is a Southern California-based singer and composer living in the San Gabriel Valley. Currently, he studies at CSU Long Beach’s Bob Cole Conservatory of Music. His work spans from the traditional, to the interactive and interdisciplinary. He collaborates frequently with artists in both dance and theater, focusing on developing new interactive methods of music making and the creation of electronic controllers using primarily Max MSP/Jitter and Arduino microcontrollers. www.davidgarciasaldana.com.

Canadian-American composer Evan Johnson (b. 1998) strives to create music that explores the concept of narrative, combining his passion for music with his love of literature, drama, and film. Evan is particularly active in the worlds of musical theatre and film, always seeking meaningful collaborations. His music has been performed by groups such as HEX Ensemble, The Walden School Players, Apple Hill Chamber Ensemble, and the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble at CalArts. Recent credits include additional orchestrations for StarKid: Homecoming, and the score for the podcast Georgie Romero is Done For. Evan recently graduated with his BFA in Composition from the California Institute of the Arts.

A veteran choral singer, Jennifer Grappone has decades of experience singing masterworks, modern compositions, and everything in between in large and small ensembles. She currently sings with Los Robles Master Chorale and periodically performs with Pacific Opera Project. In addition to singing, Jennifer volunteers with the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, and served as their children’s chorus manager for Tosca with Los Angeles Opera. Jennifer entered the University of Michigan as a clarinet major before switching to marketing and communications. She is a recognized expert in search engine optimization, co-author of two marketing books, and owner and founding partner at Gravity Search Marketing.

Krista Schaeffer grew up in California in a family of musicians. She completed her Bachelors of Music in Vocal Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she studied with Kathleen Ferguson and performed locally and internationally for the subsequent four years of university. Krista gained a particular passion for early music as well as a necessary involvement in contemporary music and its relevance in our society. She is best known for her effortless coloratura and high range. She hopes to use her skills to brighten the community with singing, and help in her part to continue establishing the next generation of classical music.

Michael Chwe sings with C3LA, the Nova Vocal Ensemble, and the UCLA Chamber Singers, has played violin with the Vicente Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Monica Symphony, and has built lithophones played by orchestras across Europe. He is professor of political science at UCLA and has written the books “Rational Ritual” and “Jane Austen, Game Theorist” and numerous articles in scholarly journals and the popular press. His work has been featured by media including the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Time, NPR, Libération, and Vogue. chwe.net/michael

Shaye Swanson recently earned her M.M. in Music Composition from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music and her B.M. in Vocal Performance from Lawrence University. Her composition, Les échos, was performed on Vis-à-Vis’ South American tour. She also scored a documentary short, Faith Alone, which won the bronze at the CSU Media Arts Festival. She wrote music to the choreographed dance, Process, which was recently selected to be performed at the American College Dance Association Baja Conference. At Long Beach, she studied composition with Dr. Torres-Santos, Dr. Verdie, and Dr. Shockley. Shaye continues to pursue her dual passions in composition and singing.

William Reeder is a singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Southern California. He has performed with such groups as Cal Voce, Canticum Novum LA, Golden Bridge, and the Jouyssance Early Music Ensemble. He holds a bachelors degree in Choral Music Education from California State University Fullerton. He currently serves as choral director at San Juan Community Presbyterian Church and drummer for the art rock band, Maneaters.