Bass Darin Erickson has been singing since his junior high days when his father asked him to join him in their church choir. Darin sang bass in the Cal Lutheran Concert Choir, and was a member of the CLU Kingsmen Quartet. Fast forward, over thirty years later, Darin continues to enjoy singing. He stays active in his church choir and also provides vocals for the Praise Band at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks. “Singing brings me peace and joy.” he says. He feels honored and blessed to be a member of the Arete Vocal Ensemble. In addition, Darin has been playing the trombone since elementary school. Throughout junior high and high school, he was a member of marching band, concert band, and the jazz band. While in college, he continued his trombone studies and participated in the orchestra, concert band, jazz band, and the pep band. Darin earned his degree in Biology.
In 1993, he married his college sweetheart, Cheri, and began teaching high school science and coaching. He loves to use music in his instruction, making tough science concepts easier to remember. Cheri and Darin have two sons, Kyle and Jordan, who also love to sing. So it runs in the family!
Four extraordinary children and one decidedly average husband may have been like scales played up and down in Robin’s life, but music and singing has been her steadying rhythm through it all. There hasn’t been a time when she wasn’t singing: Children’s Choir, Glee Club, Vocal Ensemble, Church Choir, Concert Choir, Los Robles Master Chorale, and Areté Vocal Ensemble.
Even college was dedicated to song, earning her Bachelor of Arts in Music from CLU. Now retired, she taught for 24 years in both public and private education, singing to her students every day. So much joy has come from performing with her fellow performers and there is certainly more to come.
Leanna Brand holds a degree in Voice from California State University, Northridge, where she focused her studies on Musical Theater and Opera. In her professional career, she has performed with the Los Angeles Master Chorale for 29 years and served as the chorus union representative for 12 of those years. As a session singer, she has performed on over 100 film soundtracks and commercials, including Star Trek films, Star Wars, Avatar, The Matrix, Men in Black, and The Simpsons Movie.
As a soloist, Leanna has been featured with the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. She has also soloed with numerous other organizations, including Pasadena Pro Musica, the Music in the Mountains Festival, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.
As a vocal contractor, Leanna has assembled choirs for artists such as Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy, and Christina Aguilera, as well as for various movies and television productions. She directed music at St. Julie Billiart Catholic Church in Newbury Park for over two decades, and now continues her work in music through other projects. Leanna also owns and directs a professional caroling company, Carolers.com.
Antonia Wada is a singer-songwriter based in Ventura, California. She sings with Areté Vocal Ensemble and Pacific Chorale. While continuing to sing with choirs, she aspires to perform her original songs on tour, sing for film, and write music for other artists.
Matthew has been a member of various choirs for over 14 years. His experience includes singing with the California Lutheran University Choirs and ensembles during his time as a student, graduating in 2016.
After taking a year off from choirs, he missed the high level of singing he once took part in. Seeing some of his old peers enjoying Areté, he decided to join the group in the fall of 2017. Since then, he’s felt both accepted and challenged by his peers to perform at such a professional level, while maintaining a fun and energetic atmosphere.
Matthew hopes that we can always gather for the sake of music, despite the many obstacles in our modern world, because its power can transcend those barriers—even if only for a little while.
Jason Miller, tenor, is a life-long vocalist with a devotion to a cappella ensemble singing. Before college, Jason studied piano at the McPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis. As a college student, whenever he was not studying abroad, he studied voice at Saint Olaf College with tenor Dan Dressen, and he was in large ensembles under the direction of Robert Scholz (Viking men’s choir) and Anton Armstrong (Saint Olaf Choir). As a member of the Saint Olaf Choir, he toured the country and sang for numerous international guest conductors. Through his experience with that choir, he grew as an ensemble musician and achieved high standards for musicianship and professionalism in performance.
Jason loves ensemble vocal performance for the way it brings individuals together into a corporate expression of feelings and ideas that make the ensemble much more than a sum of its individual members. He is honored to be contributing to Areté’s mission of sharing the beauty of modern vocal works with people of Southern California.
Carina McVeigh is a recent graduate from California Lutheran University where she double majored in Theatre Arts (emph. Technical Theatre) and Theology & Christian Leadership (emph. Music & Worship, Youth & Family Ministry). While at Cal Lutheran, she performed with the CLU Choir, the Women’s Chorale, and the Regals Quartet. She has also performed in various musical theatre roles including Mother in Ragtime, Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, Leisl Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and Marion Paroo in The Music Man. She plays several musical instruments including guitar, clarinet, ukulele, and percussion, and is currently the Praise Band Director at Mount Cross Lutheran Church in Camarillo, CA. She is so excited to be participating in her first season with Arete Vocal Ensemble, and is grateful to Dr. Morton for this and so many other opportunities throughout the years.
Jennifer Li has been singing with Arete since 2017. She grew up singing in church choirs and traveled internationally with youth choirs (a favorite was being invited to sing in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve). In college she sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and the Radcliffe Choral Society under the direction of Jameson Marvin. She has sung most of the major requiems and the Monteverdi Vespers at venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, but as an Orlando native, she has also enjoyed singing with ensembles at Walt Disney World. She has been a section leader and soloist for churches in New Jersey and locally in the Thousand Oaks area. When not singing, she writes and edits textbooks in the elementary grades, primarily for English language learners.
Bass Darin Erickson has been singing since his junior high days when his father asked him to join him in their church choir. Darin sang bass in the Cal Lutheran Concert Choir, and was a member of the CLU Kingsmen Quartet. Fast forward, over thirty years later, Darin continues to enjoy singing. He stays active in his church choir and also provides vocals for the Praise Band at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks. “Singing brings me peace and joy.” he says. He feels honored and blessed to be a member of the Arete Vocal Ensemble. In addition, Darin has been playing the trombone since elementary school. Throughout junior high and high school, he was a member of marching band, concert band, and the jazz band. While in college, he continued his trombone studies and participated in the orchestra, concert band, jazz band, and the pep band. Darin earned his degree in Biology.
