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!”