Featured February, 2022

Rod and Judy met in Durango, CO, and were married in 1969. They both sang in Fort Lewis College choirs, as well as doing general music studies there. After graduation they moved to Kansas City, MO, for Rod’s career with the Social Security Administration. During that time, Judy was a homemaker and community volunteer. They have both always enjoyed singing.

Pining for the Colorado mountains again, they retired to Montrose in 2003.

They attended their first VSA Chorus concert in December, 2003, at the Montrose United Methodist Church and were thrilled with the performance directed by Kelly Neill, the first VSA Chorus conductor (see page 13 for additional chorus history). Rod and Judy had been active church choir members in Kansas City. They discovered that Kelly was also from the Kansas City area and had been a singer in the Kansas City Chorale. In fact, Rod and Judy had frequented Chorale concerts when they lived in Kansas City—small world!

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Featured December, 2021

Growing up, Chris sang in her church’s youth choir, adult choir, and several small groups. Prior to moving to Montrose, she performed in a distinguished seminary choir for 12 years. Soon after becoming a Colorado resident in 2013, she was missing the discipline of people working together to create a beautiful finished choral product—one that they and others could enjoy. Then, a friend invited her to audition for the VSA Chorus. A member since 2016, she has enjoyed the experience immensely and is a fixture in the chorus' alto 2 section.

Married in 1976, Chris and husband Robert (rector of the Montrose All Saints Anglican Church) along with their daughter have lived in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Illinois. Robert likes to say, “We’d never lived west of the Mississippi, and now we live west of the Rockies.”

“It takes a lot of work to produce our concerts, but what good and worthwhile thing doesn’t? I hope audiences enjoy listening to the concerts as much as we enjoy singing them.”

Featured December, 2021

Since 1988, Bonnie sang with various choral groups that joined the orchestra in 2002 to become the Valley Symphony Association. “We sang the full Messiah every other year, wore white shirts and dark pants/skirts, and each bought our own copy of the full score.”

She grew up in northwest Iowa on a registered Holstein dairy farm, where classical music played in the barn to calm the cows. A beneficiary of the robust vocal and instrumental music programs offered in Iowa school systems, she learned intervals in elementary school, sang madrigals and studied music theory in high school, and sang the full Messiah in the county chorus by age 15. A musical high point was in 1979 when her choir was invited to sing the Haggadah with the Tifereth Israel Synagogue for Passover.

In 1982 she moved to the Western Slope when her husband was recruited by Colorado­Ute Electric Association CEO Girts Krumins (a VSA founder) to build the 345 power lines from Craig/Hayden to Farmington. She was the Delta County Health Officer and director of the Delta County Health Department from 1983 until her retirement in 2016.

Her love for the VSA began with her first rehearsal with Mike Kern. “We were working on "For Unto Us" from the Messiah and the chorus was struggling with the precise rhythms of ‘…and the government shall be upon his shoulders….’ In frustration, Mike stated that this was the Handel version­­, not the Bobby Darin/Mack the Knife swing version­­ of the Messiah, and proceeded to sing the passage, finger snapping and swinging the rhythm to emphasize his point. I was hooked!”