Performers

2005 Mother's Day Showcase

Shira Kammen received her degree in music from UC Berkeley and studied vielle with Margriet Tindemans. A member for many years of Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, and the King's Noyse, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to performance on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Israel, Morocco and Japan, and on the Colorado and Rogue rivers. Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several new groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune's Wheel; a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea; and Trouz Bras, a band devoted to the dance music of Celtic Brittany.

Susan Rode Morris is a soprano of unusual versatility whose accomplishments encompass a wide range of repertoire and musical styles. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has received much critical acclaim for her expressiveness and naturalness in singing, as well as her communicative presence.  She is a founding member of Ensemble Alcatraz and has sung with many ensembles including Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Sequentia Koln, Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, Foolia!, Magnificat!, Women's Philharmonic and others in North America and Europe.  She has premiered numerous works of Bay Area composers, including opera and theatre pieces. She founded a recording company DonSueMor which has released three compact discs, including songs of Henry Purcell and songs of 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns.  For many years she has studied voice with the legendary Lilian Loran.  A special love is teaching children the joy of singing.  She owns a baking company (DonSueMor) which supplies the U.S. with fresh madeleines.

Mariel Vandersteel first heard a Celtic fiddle concert when she was five and
learned her first Irish stepdance in the third grade; she's been in love with both ever since. She performs with The California Revels, and has toured with the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers, The Black Brothers, and plays for contradances throughout the Bay Area with The
Modal Citizens. A McBride Irish dancer and a member of the bands Inis, and The Spirit of Ireland, Mariel is the 2004 recipient of the Milwaukee Irish Fest Cultural Grant for study of traditional music in Ireland.

Amelia Romano &  Mirabel Korn (Harpists) Amelia Romano,performs with the Bay Area Youth Harp Ensemble and has played at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco’s City Hall, and YerbaBuena Center for the Performing Arts, among other venues. Mirabel Korn studies with Cheryl Ann Morris, a world renown harpist and a featured performer in many Revels’ productions.

The Deer Creek Morris Men  The Deer Creek Morris Men of Palo Alto, California, were founded in 1986. They dance in events of different types, ranging from formal stage shows to traditional street performance. Deer Creek has danced in the  Christmas Revels, danced for pagan festivals and churches alike, has appeared at many California sites, and in British Columbia, Marlboro, Vermont, and London, Ontario. Today’s dancers include Dick Bagwell – Fool, Dave Fouquet – Musician, Jim Brug, Bob Fraley, Alan Winston, Marc Newell, Ethan Hay, Mike Donohue, Noel Cragg, and Ming Ho.

The Solstice Singers are veteran members of the California Revels chorus and invaluable to our programs.  Today’s singers are Thena Berry, Helen Wills Brown, Jim Gasparini, Jenny Kee, Krista Keim, Carl Ludewig, Miko Sloper, Fred Wagner and David Watt.

David Parr (Master of Ceremonies) is California Revels new Artistic Director and has been acting and directing with many theatres in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past thirty years. Trained at the University of Illinois (M.A. in Theatre) he has also worked as a professional photographer, danced with the Minnesota Ballet Company, represented Actors’ Equity Association for ten years, and owns a video production company. He is also former Artistic Director of the Eureka Theatre Company. Recent productions include stagings of Caryl Churchill’s Fen; Kismet; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival; and Cavalleria Rusticana, The Emperor Norton, and Gounod’s Faust at West Bay Opera. David directs for the Theatre Arts Department of San Francisco City College, where he is a tenured professor, and for City Summer Opera, which he founded. He won an East Bay Media Festival award with his own script, Tarbrush, a contemporary video adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe, and he has shot documentaries in Tanzania and Nepal. David has now directed nine Revels in Oakland, as well as the Revels in Tacoma and Noye’s Fludde, featuring Revels founder Jack Langstaff.

Fred Goff (Audience Song Leader) has degrees in music theory and liturgy from the University of the Pacific and Pacific School of Religion. He has performed on choir tours of the Soviet Union and Great Britain, in the Los Angeles Master Chorale and in madrigal quartets. His teaching duties have included public and private schools in Alameda, San Francisco, and Conta Costa counties, San Francisco State University, San Francisco City College, and Laney College. He is the resident music director for the California Revels and music director of St. James Episcopal Church.