Kathryn Hansen Smith began her college studies at Occidental College in 1974,  and transferred to University of the Pacific,  earning her degrees in 1977 and 1978.

​Upon graduation, Kathryn married Timothy, moving to Evanston for continued  study at Northwestern University.  Prior to California, she taught at Westmar and Dordt Colleges (Iowa) and Gonzaga University (Spokane).

Together with their families, Kathy and Tim have lived in California since 1985.  Kathy held many part time positions, including:  Private Studio Instructor; Instructor of Voice for Las Positas and Diablo Valley Community Colleges; Director of Music Ministries and Organist at several Lutheran churches; Director of the Orinda Women’s Chorale (now Womensing); Chamber Choir Director for Cantabella Children’s Chorus; and Director of Choral Activities, Instructor of Choral Music Education, and Instructor of Voice at California State University Hayward (now East Bay).  In 2015, she retired from her first full time position as Professor of Music, Cosumnes River Community College in Sacramento.

​Throughout her career, Mrs. Smith was active as soloist, recitalist, choral clinician, adjudicator and honor choir conductor.

Kathy has been involved in ACDA since 1977, when she served as Founding President of the student chapter at UOP.  With encouragement from Patty Hennings, she started the National Women’s Chorus Repertoire Exchange.  Kathy began serving the State Chapter in 1993 when she was elected Bay Region Representative.  She continued in various positions until becoming President in 2003.  Kathy moved to the Western Division Board in 2007 as Repertoire and Standards Chair for 2-Year Colleges.  She served as Western Division President from 2011-2013, during which time she chaired the 2012 Western Division Conference in Reno, Singing the Legacy.

Other highlights of ACDA conferences include: conducting the Orinda Women’s Chorale at the 1994 Western Division Conference in Sacramento for an Interest Session with Joan Whittemore, Revisionist Music of the Ospedali Venezia (Vivaldi), presenting at the 2007 National Conference in Miami, Speak As You Sing: Keeping the Teacher’s Voice Healthy,  participating in the national meeting to reactivate the International Conductors Exchange Program (ICEP) and hosting visiting conductors from Cuba (2012) and China (2014).
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Upon retirement, she now finds time for her hobbies:  piano lessons, crochet, sewing for her granddaughters, and traveling the world with Tim, where they’ve learned to appreciate more deeply the beauty and variety of God’s glorious creation.

Julie Reyes Dana is recently retired after 38 years in choral music education, most recently as the director of the Fresno City College Voice and Choral Program, where she conducted the City Singers, Symphonic Choir, Jazz Singers, the Fresno Chorale, and taught Music Appreciation. Under her direction, Fresno City College ensembles traveled nationally and internationally, including tours to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada and performances at Carnegie Hall in New York. Prior to her work at Fresno City, Julie taught at the high school level in Coalinga and southern California, conducting treble and tenor/bass ensembles, show choirs, concert choirs and chamber ensembles. In addition to her college and school ensembles, Julie has conducted ACDA and SCVA Regional and FMCMEA Honor Choirs and was the choir director at the Shrine of St. Therese Church in Fresno.

She is dedicated to serving the choral music community as demonstrated by her past positions on state and regional music organization boards including CCDA (Past-President), SCVA, Western ACDA and CASMEC. She coordinated the Southern California Vocal Association (SCVA) choral festivals and assisted with regional and state honor choirs while teaching at the secondary level. She is currently serving as President-elect for Western Region ACDA. Her prior work on the Western ACDA board was as program chair for 5 division conferences in California, Utah and Nevada. She has also served on the faculty of Jazz Education Abroad (JEA) teaching vocal jazz in the Middle East.
Julie studied with Dorothy Renzi, and cantors at the Shrine of St. Therese Church in Fresno. She has been recognized for her work as an educator with the Silver Burdett Outstanding Choral Educator Award (2022), the State Center Community College District Bill Stewart Award of Excellence (2021) and was inducted into the SCCCD Muro de Honor in December 2022 at Arte Américas in Fresno for outstanding contributions to the district by a Latino/Chicano individual. Her formal studies include a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from San Diego State University, and a Master’s degree in Music Education from the University of Northern Colorado. Julie and her husband Mike, also a music educator, work together to foster an appreciation of music throughout their community, volunteering their time to support the next generation of music educators. They spend as much time as they can enjoying their roles as Great Aunt and Uncle with their many nieces and nephews.

Travis Rogers has been a professional choral conductor for 45 years. He retired from Napa High School in Napa, California, in June of 2017 after thirty-seven years as the choral music director. Mr. Rogers directed the activities of over 300 students (at least half of them boys) each school year in seven different ensembles. Choirs at the school toured frequently nationally and internationally, performing in world famous venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, St. Patrick’s and Christ Church Cathedrals in Dublin, Notre Dame in Paris, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, Westminster Abbey in London, and Sagrada Familia and the Barcelona Cathedral in Spain. NHS ensembles also earned top honors at several national and international competitions in New York City, Hawaii, Australia, Austria, and England as well as top ratings and awards at local, regional and state festivals and competitions.

Mary Breden is Director of Choral Activities at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A member of the music faculty at LMU since 1992, Breden has also taught in both the choral and music education programs at San Jose State University and The University of Texas at Austin.
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At Loyola Marymount, Breden served as department chair from 1994-2014. As supervisor of the Choral Conducting Concentration, she has taught such courses as Choral Conducting and Choral Methods. Under her leadership the LMU Concert Choir, Women's Chorus, and Consort Singers have appeared in a variety of venues throughout California, as well as New York City, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Tucson and Phoenix. The ensembles have also appeared at ACDA Western Division Conventions, toured with Michael Crawford and appeared with him on his PBS special Michael Crawford... Music of the Night. Internationally, Breden has conducted the LMU Choruses in concerts throughout Italy, Germany, Austria, and France, and she has appeared as a guest conductor in Brussels, Belgium.

Joseph Huszti is Professor Emeritus of Music in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. His tenure at UC Irvine included twenty-seven international concert tours featuring numerous prize-winning performances at the International Musical Eisteddfod, Llangollen, Wales (1979, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2008, 2017), Béla Bartók International Choral Competition, Debrecen, Hungary (1988, 1994, 2000), the Koorfest, den Haag, Holland (1979), World Choir Games (2006, 2010) and Bratislava, Slovakia (2014). The University of California, Irvine choirs under his direction have performed concerts in the cathedrals of York, Sterling, Westminster, Coventry, Canterbury, Ely, Burgos, Liverpool and Boston as well as presenting formal concerts in London, Tokyo, Burgos, Shanghei, Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, and Vienna.
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Before coming to California, Huszti headed the choral activities at Boston University’s School for the Arts and directed the Young Vocalists Program from 1972-1977 in Lenox, Massachusetts at the Tanglewood Festival. He collaborated with internationally renowned musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Norman Dello Joio. 

Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, Anna Hamre serves as Artistic Director of the Fresno Community Chorus, where she conducts the Master Chorale, Coro Piccolo, and Coro Solare. While each ensemble mounts its own performances, the Master Chorale frequently collaborates with the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra.

Dr. Hamre took over the Fresno Community Chorus in 2002. With the collaborative leadership of an active board, the large ensemble Master Chorale has become the premier symphonic chorus in the Fresno area. In recent years, multiple performances of the Master Chorale have been included by the Fresno Bee in “Top Cultural Arts Events” in the Fresno area. The chamber ensemble Coro Piccolo is most noted for its holiday performances at St. Anne’s Chapel. In 2016, FCC, Inc. added to its organization a new classical choir, Coro Solare, which is designed to rehearse and perform only during daylight hours. The treble-voice ensemble Coro Vox Aeterna was created to perform on the CD Mother of Light, featuring international star Isabel Bayrakdarian, released in 2016.

RODNEY EICHENBERGER, Professor of Choral Music, teaches graduate choral conducting, choral techniques, and conducting pedagogy. He has lectured and guest conducted extensively throughout the United States and abroad. Professor Eichenberger is the program coordinator for the choral conducting division of International Workshops with recent summer seminars held in Biarritz and Lyon, France; Stavanger, Norway; Glasgow, Scotland and Graz, Austria. His instructional video on choral conducting with André Thomas, “What They See Is What You Get,” released in 1994 by Hinshaw Music Company, is now in its ninth printing.

​For the past 25 years, he has been an active participant in choral music education in Australia and New Zealand. He has guest conducted and lectured at the Swedish Choral Directors Association Convention in Orebro, Sweden, presented sessions at the Third World Symposium of Choral Music in Vancouver, British Columbia, and presented workshops at “Buenos Aires Sings,” the First International School and Youth Choral Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Vance George is recognized internationally as one of America’s leading choral conductors. Under his direction he and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus have been hailed as one of the finest in the world and have received four Grammys and an Emmy.

His unique range of musical styles, knowledge of languages, mastery of vocal colors, and synthesis of the choral-orchestral tradition has been lauded by audiences, critics, and conductors. His work embodies the legacy of the great maestros and mentors he has known as protégé and colleague, especially Robert Shaw, Margaret Hillis, Robert Page, Otto Werner-Mueller, Mary Oyer and Kurt Masur, John Nelson, Helmut Rilling, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt and Michael Tilson Thomas.
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For more than 23 years he prepared and conducted the SFS Chorus and SF Symphony in performances of large choral/orchestral repertoire as well as seasonal and pops concerts.

Linda Lovaas received her B.M.E. and M.Ed. in music from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and began her teaching career in 1977 at Levi Fry Middle School in Texas City, Texas. She retired in 2008 after 18 years directing the choruses and drama teams at Mark Twain Junior High School in Modesto, California.

She was selected 2002-2003 Region VI Teacher of Excellence for the California League of Middle Schools and also Teacher of the Month for Channel 10 News in 2003.

Linda has been a guest conductor for various junior high honor choirs in the state. She has given sessions at CMEA and California ACDA (now CCDA) conferences, and has worked as a clinician with teachers and students at many school sites. She has served on the California ACDA Board as Junior High/Middle School Repertoire & Standards Chair, and as Chair of the Summer Conference at ECCO. She was manager for the Junior High Honor Choir at the ACDA Western Division Conference in Anaheim (2008), Reno (2012), and Santa Barbara (2014).
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Linda loves spending time with her husband, Duane, and going on adventures in their 1975 French powder blue TR6. She has taken up tap dancing again after a 50 year hiatus, and recently danced as a popcorn box on the Modesto Junior College stage at her studio’s recital! She volunteers and is on the board for Modesto’s Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary. She loves making quilts, reading good books, and watching movies of all kinds!