Biographies

Katie Bonk: From the time Katherine Bonk was born she always loved to sing. She grew up in Jamestown, a small town in southwest Ohio. All throughout school she was a part of choir, show choir, musical theatre productions and sang whenever the opportunity arose. Katherine Bonk is now a junior at Wilmington College. She is majoring in Communications with a concentration in Public Relations with a minor in Theatre.  At Wilmington, Katherine’s passion for music continues to grow. She is involved with the Wilmington College Chorale, Voices In Praise Gospel Choir, and has been in numerous theatrical productions. She also has worked as an intern for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the department of artistic administration. She is very thankful for all the opportunities God has given her.

Kelly Cobb: Kelly Cobb is a native Cincinnatian and a graduate of Cincinnati’s acclaimed School for Creative and Performing Arts. She is a contributing member to several local community organizations including The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, The Mirror Movement and Lasting Impressions. Kelly currently sings second soprano with MUSE: Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir and has enjoyed traveling and singing with the dynamic and diverse group. The fact that the World Choir Games will be held in Cincinnati in 2012 is exciting in itself, but the opportunity to perform with SingCinnati at the 2010 games in Shaoxing, China is a once in a lifetime chance to represent our amazing city.

Sara Garrett: Born in Fayetteville, Ohio, Sara is a junior at Wilmington College.  She is an Early Childhood Education major, and has been involved with the Wilmington College Chorale and Music Department for three years.  Music has always been in her soul.  It drives what she does and how she perceives the world.  Sara has always had an interest in rock and popular music from around the globe.  In 2009, she studied for a semester near Osaka, Japan, exploring and enjoying the country’s colorful music scene. She hopes to return there to teach in the near future.  Sara is extremely grateful for this opportunity to join other musically-minded people from around the world and, of course, to see China!

David Gordon-Johnson: David Gordon-Johnson would like to thank Cathy Roma for this amazing opportunity to perform in the 2010 WCG. David is a junior at Walnut Hills High School, where he performs with the Marching Blue & Gold and in very active in the theater department. He sings in the May Festival Youth Chorus, is a former member of the Cincinnati Boychoir, and will be performing with the Cincinnati Opera Chorus in Summer 2010. David studies voice privately with Karl Resnik at the Musical Arts Center and piano with Dr. Richard Van Dyke at the Cincinnati Music Academy. He is a member of St John’s Unitarian Universalist Church, where he sings in the choir and is featured as a soloist. David hopes to continue his studies in music as a Vocal Performance major in Fall 2011.

Bennyce E. Hamilton: Bennyce Hamilton is a firefighter/paramedic with the Cincinnati Fire Department and has done so for the past 22 years.  She also teaches high school English at Scarlet Oaks Career Development Campus. In addition to her career, she spends her spare time singing with MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir where she has been a member for the past 9 seasons. In 2008, Bennyce completed her doctoral work in Education at the University of Cincinnati.

Bennyce enjoys reading, playing board games, reality television shows, and entertaining her friends.

Keith Hamrick: Keith Hamrick is a graduate of the Wilmington College where he majored in psychology with a minor in music. A resident of Doylestown, Ohio, Keith was a member of the Wilmington Chorale (directed by Dr Catherine Roma) while he was at the College for four years. He plans to attend the Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio to pursue his graduate degree in the Fall of 2010.

Kanniks Kannikeswaran: Internationally known musician Kanniks Kannikeswaran is a visionary composer and music educator who has consistently employed his knowledge, understanding and research of music to create works of art that engage diverse communities. He is a pioneer of the Indian American choral movement and has founded and directed community choirs in Cincinnati OH, Bethlehem PA, Tampa FL and Houston TX. Recognized with awards for his community building work, Kanniks is often described as a renaissance personality who transcends various disciplines such as music, art history, spirituality, science and information technology with ease. He has been teaching Indian music at the University of Cincinnati in the capacity of an Adjunct faculty since 1994 and he is also a visiting artist in residence at the Center for India Studies, University of South Florida. A resident of Cincinnati for over 25 years, Kanniks is proud to represent Cincinnati along with his daughter Vidita and the SingCinnati choir at Shaoxing.

Vidita Kanniks: Vidita Kanniks is a native of Cincinnati and is representative of a generation that has imbibed the best of the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Vidita is proficient on the piano and the violin and is also trained in Indian classical music and has considerable stage experience as a soloist and as a choir member. She was featured as the lead vocalist in ‘Vismaya’ an archival recording of 18th century colonial Indian music produced by her father Kanniks Kannikeswaran. Vidita is a member of the Mason High School Symphony orchestra. She sang with the Cincinnati Children’s choir for four years. She was amongst the group of children chosen to sing in the Broadway production Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Aronoff Center, Cincinnati.  Vidita is delighted and proud to be part of SingCinnati! and looks forward to the cultural-immersion experience at the World Choir Games.

Maria Ioannis Kitsinis: Maria I. Kitsinis was born to a Greek immigrant and a native Cincinnatian.  She attended Walnut Hills High School where she was an avid choir member and participated in school musicals.  She earned a bachelor’s degree in American Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at Bowling Green State University. Although her studies were not rooted in music, she sang in several university choirs. After returning to Cincinnati, She heard about MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir, and was thrilled to see that the choir’s mission included “musical excellence and social change”, which aligns with her personal mission.  About the same time, Maria was working as an AmeriCorps member in the Public Allies Program, where she served at the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative and BRIDGES for a Just Community.  After two years of service at Public Allies, Maria  started working for Clark Montessori Junior High and High School, where she currently works as an instructor’s assistant in a Junior High Community.   Her inspiring experiences with Public Allies and Clark Montessori have revealed a vocation for working with youth.   She will be attending Miami University in the fall to study Music Education where she will merge her passions of working with youth, music, and social change.  She also enjoys playing guitar, cooking, painting, and traveling.

Sarah Luken-Wichman: As a native Cincinnatian, Sarah is extremely proud to represent her home town at the World Choir Games in Shaoxing, China! In addition to singing with SingCinnati, Sarah is a singing member and board member of MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir; a women’s choral organization dedicated to musical excellence and social change. Sarah’s love of choral singing began at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts where she performed in ambitious choral productions including Orff’s Carmina Burana, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and a concert adaptation of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. After singing in choirs most of her life and experiencing the powerful way music connects us locally and globally, Sarah is grateful for this amazing opportunity to cross the globe and connect directly with other cultures and people through music and a shared love of singing.

Steve Milloy:  Steve Milloy  (b. 1965) is an award-winning author who coaches and directs singers in schools, churches, theaters, and on concert stages across the Midwestern United States. His musicianship was shaped earlier at fine arts schools in St. Louis and Kansas City with mentors such as Kirby Shaw.  He has performed in popular styles in many venues:  theme parks, entertaining troops overseas, TV and radio, and singing with the acclaimed a cappella octet, Pieces of 8.

Steve has been commissioned to compose or arrange pieces for over a dozen of the GALA choruses in the US and UK.  He has worked at the keyboard and/or on the podium with choruses and theater troupes in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati.
Contemporary music for worship has been Steve’s responsibility at a thriving Cincinnati church, where he has led their Praise Team for seven years and now directs their youth choir.  Recently he has returned to singing and acting in productions such as The Full Monty and Caroline, or Change.

With Dr. Charles Beale he has co-authored the Oxford University Press book “Popular Voiceworks” –  awarded “Best Popular Publication” by the Music Industries Association of the UK in 2008 – and is currently working on “Popular Voiceworks 2.”

Visit Steve’s website at : www.stevemilloy.net

Charmaine Moore: Charmaine Moore is Director of Education for the Cincinnati Opera.

She fell in love with opera while studying clarinet performance and music education at The Ohio State University and spending summers as the bass clarinetist for the acclaimed Pine Mountain Music Festival Opera Orchestra in Houghton, Michigan.  She taught K-8 general music in Baltimore, MD, and in 2002 Charmaine began her work in Arts Administration with Cincinnati Opera as the Education Associate where she has developed educational materials and managed communications and booking for Cincinnati Opera’s Education Department, which reaches over 20,000 students and adults in schools, churches, and other community venues.
As Director of Education, Charmaine was project leader for the 2007 company commission, Rise for Freedom: The John P. Parker Story, produces touring school programs and the “Opera Raps Lecture Series,” and represents Cincinnati Opera on several committees including: the Arts Educators of Greater Cincinnati; Strive Student Success Network; and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Agenda 360. She was recognized as a 2005 YWCA Rising Star for her efforts in arts education, is a member of the Urban League African American Leadership Development Class XV, and was recently named one of the Cincinnati Business Courier’s Forty Under 40.

Charmaine is also an active member of MUSE Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir where she contributes as a singer and music librarian, and participates in fundraisers and rallies for MUSE, Bridges for a Just Community, Drop Inn Center, Fine Arts Fund, Take Back the Night March and Vigil, Dhamma Moli Girls School in Nepal, and Justicia Global in the Dominican Republic.

Linda O’Neal: Linda O’Neal is a member of the Martin Luther King Choral’s Voices Of Freedom located in Cincinnati, Ohio. During her college and early adult years she acted and sang in many well-known stage plays. She married her husband, pianist Bishop Todd O’Neal and proceeded her life singing by his side ministering throughout the United States, as well as in other countries. Together they share four children and pastor House of Joy Christian Ministries located in Cincinnati.

Joshua O’Neal: Joshua O’Neal, son of Linda & Todd O’Neal, discovered the potential in his singing ability when a nun withdrew him from class & had him sing throughout the entire school to other staff members. He has sung in various choirs throughout the United States and signed a modeling contract with New View Management in early 2010. Although he continues to participate in the arts he plans to finish his college education at Xavier University.

Jo Ellen Pellman: Jo Ellen Pellman will be a freshman next year at Walnut Hills High School. Singing is her passion and she performs with a plethora of choirs. She also enjoys theater and dance. Jo  Ellen thinks harmony in music is an amazing thing and also represents what the World Choir Games mean to her: singers from all different walks of life coming together to make something beautiful.

Diana Porter: Diana Porter graduated from Manchester College after studying in Marburg, Germany in her junior year.  She received her Master’s Degree in German Literature from the University of Cincinnati. In her 35 years with the Cincinnati Public Schools, she taught German and was involved in creating successful small high schools such as the High School for Teaching and Technology at Hughes Center.  She was one of the first “Lead Teachers” in CPS and was honored as a national  “Break the mold” school reformer in 1993.

She was also active in the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers and served on the executive board for over 33 years—as an officer, collective bargaining chairperson, Human rights chairperson and Educational Issues chairperson.

Diana was a member of a political Rock and Roll Band “Band Together” with her husband Leonard Webb.  They opened for Gil-Scott Herron and Holly Near and played at many anti-nuclear events.   In 1983, Diana met Cathy Roma and became a founding member of MUSE:Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir.  She still sings with MUSE where she coordinates the Social Change committee.

Diana and Leonard have two adult children.  She enjoys gardening, working on a team to manage a farmer’s market and working on sustainable  solutions for community issues.

Lois Shegog: Lois Shegog is a music educator, performer and African-American music clinician. She is Assistant Director of MUSE: Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir and also assists Dr Catherine Roma, with the Martin Luther King Coalition Chorale, UMOJA (Swahili word for ‘unity’), a men’s choir of inmates at the Lebanon Correction Institution, and other outreach choirs in Cincinnati. For 11 years, she managed and performed with the group Sista Friends, a 1999 finalist in the Cincinnati Applause Magazine Image Makers’ Award. She was one of eleven candidates invited to audition for Sweet Honey in the Rock, a Grammy award-winning African-American women’s acapella ensemble.

Dorothy Smith: Dorothy Smith was raised in a musical home and has loved music and singing all her life.  She currently sings with MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but is now a confirmed Midwesterner.  For her day job she is an archivist at the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College. Her real job is growing vegetables and walking about in the woods.

Quatez Scott: Quatez Scott attends Wilmington College where he majors in language arts education. He started singing since he was age 7 and has been involved in musical theater and choir. He currently serves as Board Member of CHOICES, Inc., a foster care agency in Dayton, Ohio.

Bo Wachendorf: Bo is a native Cincinnatian and a descendant of German immigrants who arrived in the city in the 1840’s. Bo’s grandfather, Raymond, formed a quartet with his siblings that sang in various venues in Cincinnati. They also formed a church choir at St. Agnes in Bond Hill. Bo’s grandfather met his future wife, Clara, when she was a soloist in a local troupe. The history of family singing continued with Bo’s father, John, who sang baritone in the Cincinnatians Chorale Group. During his high school and college years, Bo was a member of various rock bands playing electric bass and singing backup vocals. Bo is currently a freelance graphic and interior designer and sings with the St. Johns UU Choir. He is honored to be a part of such a wonderful and talented group going to the World Choir Games.

Trina L. Walton:  Trina attended the School of Creative & Performing Arts, and Aiken Senior High School in Cincinnati Ohio. As far as she remembers, she has been singing since she could talk! Trina’s mother studied classical music at CCM (The University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music). (She fondly remembers her father having a voice that ‘could make James Earl Jones sound like a school girl!)

Trina is a member of MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir as well as the Voices of Victory Mass Choir.

She believes that music gives wings to the soul.

Leonard Webb: Leonard Webb grew up in Shipshewana, Indiana.  He graduated in 1976 from Manchester College , majoring in Music and German.  He participated in a Junior Year abroad program at Philipps Universitaet in Marburg, Germany.

In 2007,  Leonard retired after 30 years in the Cincinnati Public Schools where he taught German and Music.  He continues in music, singing with the Martin Luther King Chorale, and performing with Just Earth, a trio whose music focuses on the environment and peace.  Previously, he performed with his wife, Diana Porter, in a political folk-rock band, Band Together. Leonard also coordinates the music and cultural events at the Farm Market of College Hill.

He enjoys canoeing, gardening, and brewing beer. He and Diana have a large vegetable garden, and for the past 2 years, Leonard has been growing hops for his homebrew.  Leonard and his wife Diana have two children, Mark, of the Dominican Republic, and Elly, who lives in Philadelphia.

John Wesley Wright: Tenor John Wesley Wright is known for his artistic and soulful interpretations of music from baroque to Broadway. Holding degrees from Maryville College (’87) and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (’90), his diversity as an artist has afforded him, among other things, a nationally televised concert for the Belgian Royal Family, and tours as a soloist and in professional ensembles throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.

With a host of opera and oratorio roles, art songs, spirituals, and cabaret music in his repertoire, Wright is a member of the internationally acclaimed American Spiritual Ensemble which recently made its New York and Kennedy Center debuts. His signature rendition of “Here’s One” is highlighted in the PBS documentary “The Spirituals: Featuring the American Spiritual Ensemble”, released nationally in 2007. Most recently, Wright performed a Rodgers and Hammerstein program with Greensboro Opera and Eastern Music Festival, appeared with the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus in their production of Lush Life: A Tribute to Billy Strayhorn, and sang the Evangelist and tenor roles in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Delaware Choral Society.

Having worked with such conductors as Nicolas McGegan, Ton Koopman, and Robert Page, many of Wright’s concert career experiences have been collaborations with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Neal Gittleman. With Gittleman and the DPO he has sung the title roles of Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions, Britten’s War Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Einhorn’s Voices of Light, and most recently Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Wright returns with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra in spring of 2011 to interpret the role of the Celebrant in a fully produced version of Bernstein’s Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers.

John Wesley Wright has also been successful in competition. He is the gold medalist and top prizewinner of the Savannah Music Festival’s American Traditions Vocal Competition 2000 and has claimed top prizes from the National Federation of Music Clubs, Metropolitan Opera National Council, Bel Canto Regional Artists, Ohio’s Vocal Resource Network Art Song Competition, and the International Schubert Competition in Vienna, Austria.

A native of Rome, Georgia, John is a leader of workshops on African American song tradition, a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and has been vocal consultant for the singers and actors at Disney and Epcot Center. John served as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Dayton from 1995 – 2006 and has spent summers as a guest artist, teacher and stage director at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Kentucky Governor’s School and most recently, the Maryland Summer Center for the Arts held at Salisbury University. Wright joined the Salisbury University music faculty in fall of 2006 where he coordinates the voice area, teaches private voice and directs the Opera Workshop.

Alex Thio: Alex is a collaborative pianist and instrumental/choral accompanist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. A native of Singapore, Alex has been in America for almost 21 years and has come to love this country as his own home. Graduating from Grace College (Indiana) and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Alex holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in piano performance. As an in-demand collaborative pianist, Alex has served as competition pianist for competitors of the North American Brass Band Association and the International Women’s Brass Conference 2010 in Toronto, Canada.

He is currently a piano instructor, teaching piano and music theory in the Cincinnati area. He also serves as choral accompanist to the excellent choral programs of Sycamore Junior High and Sycamore High Schools.