Dr. Ronald Kean, Emeritus Professor of Music at Bakersfield College, recently retired after completing his 30th year of teaching in California. His DMA degree is from the University of Southern California where his conducting teachers were Rodney Eichenberger, James Vail, and Daniel Lewis as apprentice conductor of the USC Symphony. Prior to his advanced degrees, Ron was invited to be a copyist for the late Robert Shaw and sang in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Chorus. He studied west African drumming from Ghanaian master drummer Samuel Kwaku Daddy and Latin percussion with Marcos Reyes from the renowned group, “War.” 

His teaching opportunities included choral music and world music, which he taught for the past 26 years in the Kern Community College District. Prior experience includes four years as a high school choral music teacher in southern California. He was awarded the 2012-2013 Bakersfield College Distinguished Teaching Award by his colleagues. 

William Dehning retired in 2007 after fifteen years as Chairman and Professor of Choral Music at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he conducted the USC Chamber Choir and taught choral conducting.  For twenty years prior to his appointment to USC, Dehning was Director of Choirs at the University of the Pacific, where he was recipient of the university’s Distinguished Professor Award and its Commencement speaker in 1991, and where he was honored by the alumni for his years of service.  Under his leadership, the Thornton Chamber Choir won seven prizes in international European competitions and the ensemble also appeared to standing ovations at six ACDA conventions. 

From 1985-1995 he was the founder-conductor of the California Choral Company, a professional-caliber chamber chorus that attained a fine reputation in Europe as well as in the U.S., where its performance was a highlight of the 1991 ACDA National Convention.

Albert McNeil is a native Californian — born in Los Angeles. He earned Bachelor and Master degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles, and did his doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, the Westminster Choir College of Princeton, and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is presently Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California at Davis, where he was Director of Choral Activities for 21 years and headed the Music Education Program. Simultaneous with the Davis period, he taught Ethnomusicology at the University of Southern California for 12 years. Prior to his University teaching, McNeil taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 17 years beginning at the elementary level and including junior highs, and ended his tenure in the district at the Susan Miller Dorsey High School where he headed a multi-school program known as APEX, Area Project for Educational Exchange involving five High Schools in a unique federally funded experimental program with each high school specializing in unique course offerings.

Richard Messenger is a graduate of Hastings College (Nebraska) and did graduate work at the University of Iowa and at California State University, Fullerton. He taught at the high school and community college level in Iowa for seven years before moving to California in 1976 to study with Howard Swan at CSUF. In addition to Dr. Swan, he counts as mentors Daniel Moe, Deral Johnson, Weston Noble, and John Alexander. He is retired from the position of Choral Music Director at Irvine High School (Irvine, CA) where he taught from 1977 – 2010. He has served as an adjunct professor of music at California State University at Long Beach and at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa. In 2000, he became the Director of Music at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. 

Under his direction, the Irvine High School Chorale performed in festival choirs at Carnegie Hall in 1995, 1999, 2005, and in 2009. In the 2005 appearance, they were selected to give the featured choir performance at which the choir premiered “And the Night Shall Be Filled With Music”, written for them by composer Peter Boyer. The IHS Chorale was invited to return to give the featured choir performance at a festival at Carnegie Hall in 2009. In the summer of 2003, the Chorale accepted an invitation to perform the music of Eric Whitacre in Berlin, performing under the composer’s direction. Irvine High School choirs appeared onstage with Pacific Symphony Orchestra at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on numerous occasions. 

Gary Lamprecht grew up in Long Beach California. He attended Long Beach City College, Cal State University, Long Beach. He received his teaching credential through Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo.

Gary Lamprecht was a public school teacher for 34 years. He taught 7th through 12th grade choral music on the Central Coast at Laguna Middle School, Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo High School.

Gary Lamprecht has sponsored and presented the annual Central Coast Choral Festival for Middle and High School Choirs for 39 years. In recent years as man as 75 choirs have attended the two day Festival.

In 1985, Mr. Lamprecht had the distinction of receiving the first “Teacher of the Year” award for San Luis Obispo and Coastal Unified School District.

Education
Whittier College, Bachelor of Arts
University of Southern California, Master of Arts
University of Southern California, Doctor of Music in Conducting
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Biography
William Hall, D.M.A., was the Founding Dean and Artistic Director for the Center for the Arts at Chapman University, a professor of music at Chapman since 1963 and the first distinguished professor to hold the Bertea Family Endowed Chair in Music.

Hall taught at major conservatories of music around the world, and has numerous compositions and arrangements on the market including his own choral series with National Music Publishers. His professional organization, the William Hall Chorale was under contract to Columbia Artists Management for over thirty years and sang throughout the U.S. and abroad.

After Sheldon Disrud relocated from his native midwest to Southern California, he began to pursue a career in music — a marked departure from his original goal of becoming a doctor. Having formed a vocal sextet at L.A. City College, Disrud was contacted by an agent whose client, a singer, was looking for backup singers. The singer was Mel Torme, and Disrud and his friends became “The Mel-Tones.” As a performer, Disrud routinely rubbed elbows with the likes of Les Baxter, Marilyn Horne, Paul Whiteman and the future Mrs. Henry Mancini. After attending USC from 1946-’51, Disrud flirted with the show-biz life, but ultimately went directly from show business to a teaching job at Anaheim High School.

Disrud was brought to FC in the mid-1960s to teach and conduct choir madrigal, chamber singers and the a capella choir. The school’s music building was brand new and the department boasted faculty like Sara McFerrin, Dorothy Griffin and Nelson Bonar. While teaching at Fullerton College, Disrud also assisted Dr. Charles Hirt, one of his teachers from USC and his mentor, in running Disneyland’s annual Candlelight Procession at Christmastime, which Hirt started in 1957 and Disrud directed and ran from 1980 to 1990. Though now primarily retired, Disrud conducts church choirs and retirees in Orange County.

Carole Glenn believes that music is an amazing force which can create connections between people and lift them to the heights. She made this discovery at an early age, singing in sacred services and around the campfire at Scout camp. Throughout the years, the love of music and the understanding of its power have guided Carole to devote her life to its creation.

Carole is a Certified Music Practitioner (CMP) employed by Franciscan Hospice of Tacoma, WA, and Hospice of Kitsap County, Silverdale, WA. Carole brings music to the bedside of those who are ill, birthing, or transitioning. The use of therapeutic music adds beauty and comfort to these life situations. As a CMP, Carole is a graduate of the Music for Healing and Transition Program (www.mhtp.org.)

Polly Vasché was Choir Director at Thomas Downey High School in Modesto from 1975 to 2004. During that time the Knightengales and other Downey ensembles appeared on numerous occasions in both concert and interest sessions at ACDA and CMEA conventions. The Downey Choirs travelled widely and hosted a Men’s and Women’s Ensemble Festival for sixteen years. For ten years, Polly also conducted the Chancel Choir at Centenary United Methodist Church in Modesto and was active in the Choral Conductors Guild (CCG).

After graduating from Coronado High School in 1960, Polly earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and a Master of Arts Degree in Education from Stanford University. After working for several years, Polly entered California State University Stanislaus to study music at the age of thirty. She majored in Piano and Vocal Peformance, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a teaching credential in 1975. Gary Unruh was her vocal/choral teacher and mentor at CSUS and later as well. During a sabbatical leave from Downey in 1989-90, Polly studied one semester at Westminster Choir College in Princeton with Joseph Flummerfelt, and one semester at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with Paul Salamunovich.

The 2008 Howard Swan Award honoree, Charlene Archibeque, is a Professor Emeritus from San Jose State University who recently retired after directing the Choral Music program there for 35 years. Her retirement celebration was a wonderful testimony to her years of influence upon singers and choral conductors as hundreds of her former students joined together to perform for her one last time for an audience of a thousand. In addition to San Jose State, she taught for thirteen years in San Diego at all levels of public school music and taught the first experimental program in team-teaching at the junior high level.

While at San Jose State, she built a strong choral studies program. Conducting the Concert Choir and Choraliers in hundreds of concerts during her tenure, her choirs performed at 25 regional, divisional, state, and national Conventions for ACDA and MENC. The Choraliers recorded seven professional compact discs; and if you don’t have them, you should get them as they are wonderful resources of literature and beautiful singing.