Juan Gonzalez is a musician/educator who comes from an eclectic background and seeks to share his abilities and taste. Growing up as a vocalist/percussionist, Juan seeks out any performance opportunity to share his passion. Juan earned his B.A. in Music Education and Technology at California Lutheran University and during his time he was in a variety of ensembles including the CLU Choir, Wind Ensemble, and Kingsmen Quartet. Currently, he performs in Areté Vocal Ensemble, the New West Symphony Chorus, and the Camarillo Community Band and is a member of the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) and Southern California Vocal Association.
Archives: Singers (Page 2 of 6)
Kelsey Ceco is a Thousand Oaks resident and thrilled to be with Areté Vocal Ensemble. Ceco is a soprano with a vast background in musical theatre, stage performance, and classical voice. She has been contracted by Disney for 10 years and most recently performed at Hong Kong Disneyland for the 2024 holiday season as a main stage vocalist in their nightly “Holiday Wish Come True” Tree Lighting ceremony. She’s been in over 25 musical theatre productions including Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” and Annabel Glick in “The Lucky Stiff”. Kelsey spends her free time cooking with her husband, Dan, hanging out with friends and family, and putting on “Barbershop Therapy” where people get together to sing barbershop tags and talk about life.
Kristian Bakken is a dedicated musician and vocalist currently performing with Areté Vocal Ensemble and the New West Symphony Chorus. A 2023 graduate of California Lutheran University, he sang with the CLU Choir throughout his four years, performed with the Kingsmen Quartet for two years, and served as Choir President during his senior year. Kristian has been involved with music and singing in choirs throughout his life and is grateful to continue that passion in the local choral community.
Joey Li has found immense joy in being a member of Areté since 2022, and he considers it a distinct privilege to create music alongside such exceptionally talented musicians and vocalists within the ensemble.
Although his primary instruments are piano and pipe organ, Joey grew up singing in church choirs and even tried his hand directing a small choir as an organist. He continues to enjoy making music with various choral groups and as a bass section lead in local church choirs. Joey occasionally lends his skills as a piano accompanist or steps in as a church organist when the opportunity arises. More recently, he has been attempting to keep a harpsichord in tune.
Joey received an MBA from University of Virginia and a degree in biochemistry from Harvard, where he met his wife, Jennifer Li, who also sings in Areté. His professional background is in customer insights, market research, and analytics in healthcare. Outside of work and music, Joey can be found wrangling the household cats or visiting Disney theme parks.
Rebecca Simon has private training in classical voice and has been singing for over 25 years in Southern California and abroad. Prior to joining Areté, she sang with the Metropolitan Master Chorale, Concert Singers, London Classical Choir, and the Los Robles Master Chorale. In 2011 she had the amazing experience singing with Los Robles in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”) at the Shrine, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
Outside of musical performance, Rebecca is a historian of early modern piracy. She earned her PhD at King’s College London in 2017 and has published three books: Why We Love Pirates, Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and most recently The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship. She has also appeared in documentary programs such as The Curse of Oak Island, Beyond Oak Island, History’s Greatest Mysteries, The UnXplained, and The Lost Pirate Kingdom. Rebecca currently teaches at Santa Monica College and Cal State Northridge.
Rebecca lives in Ventura with her husband and pets. When they’re not working, you can often find the two of them writing in the Barnes & Noble café and haunting the stacks.
Lijia Xie, baritone, is excited to be joining Areté for his first season! In college, he sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum under the direction of Andrew Clark, where he was lucky enough to meet his wife Victoria and sing solos in Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Howells’ Requiem, and other works. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Lijia participated as a Choral Scholar with the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel Choir, and also previously sang with the Chicago Chorale for a season in 2019.
Aside from the classical choral genre, Lijia has nurtured a wide range of interests including musical theatre and vocal jazz, with experience in smaller vocal jazz and contemporary a cappella ensembles throughout his life, and also as a multi-instrumentalist, having studied alto saxophone, guitar, and classical violin.
In his professional life, Lijia currently works as a machine learning engineer on search and recommendations at Reverb, an online marketplace for musical instruments and subsidiary of Etsy; he also recently completed training in pastoral ministry, theology, and philosophy of religion through an MDiv at UChicago’s Divinity School. He looks forward to continuing to weave together the many threads of his personal and professional life here in sunny Southern California.
Ahou Yasmine (Soprano) is a versatile performer and writer. She has previously sung with various ensembles, including mixed-genre vocal arts group Artes Vocales, where favorite performances included soprano solos in the Mozart Requiem with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Schnittke’s Requiem, and a staged Witches’ Chorus from Macbeth; while she also served as Associate Artistic Producer. Ahou’s performance experience also spans theater productions and short films.
As bookwriter and lyricist, Ahou has written a short, original musical titled Seeing the Light, which held performances at The Broadwater in Hollywood. This satirical tale explores the trials of a female astronomer in the late 19th century. Ahou has also worked as Co-Producer on the short Persian-language film Raz, which was featured in a screening of shorts at the MoMA.
Ahou is a member of Actor’s Equity, Maestra, and Dramatists Guild. She is delighted to be singing with Areté Vocal Ensemble!
Megan Lindsey is a versatile soprano with a rich background in both opera and choral performance. She has performed with leading opera companies, including Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica (Chorus, San Diego Opera, 2023), La Traviata (Chorus, Opera Santa Barbara, 2022), and The Mikado (Pitti-Sing understudy, Pacific Opera Project, 2019). Other notable opera roles include (Micaëla, Carmen), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), and Papagena (Die Zauberflöte). She is thrilled to be back singing with Areté after ten years! Megan holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from California State University, Northridge, and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from California Lutheran University. She is currently a section leader with the Verdi Chorus opera organization since 2018. She spends most of her time with her fiancé Wilson and cat Axl.
Victoria Cochran Xie joined Areté in the fall of 2024. Hailing from Georgia, she has been a proud alto 1 chorister since middle school. In college, she sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum under the direction of Andrew Clark, where she met her husband Lijia, who also sings with Areté. While at Harvard, Victoria enjoyed singing an array of choral music with guest conductors ranging from Sir John Eliot Gardiner to Craig Hella Johnson. During her PhD studies at the University of Chicago, she sang with the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel Choir with director James Kallembach.
Victoria currently lives in Thousand Oaks with her husband and their adorable mini Aussie, Mocha. She works as a postdoctoral scientist at Amgen.
Kally McMurray-Fisher began singing harmony at a very early age and when she was 4, while playing a song on a toy piano, couldn’t understand why she couldn’t harmonize with herself. Being part of school, church, and community choirs and ensembles has been part of her DNA since elementary school. She minored in vocal performance at UCSB and actively pursued solo work for special events throughout her high school, college and adult life. She was part of a female duo team that were similar to the Righteous Brothers. The duo performed for many So Cal events including opening for a Beach Boys concert and were asked to sign a recording contract that ended abruptly when her friend got married.
Kally’s challenging business career, filled with travel and long hours while raising children, precluded her from being part of organized choirs until 2010 when she became a member of Los Robles Master Chorale and the ensemble group êko, continuing until the organization dissolved in 2022. She is thrilled to be part of the talented members of Areté under the direction of Wyant Morton, and the New West Symphony Chorus since 2023.
