ALENDA: Alenda grew up in Maryland and started her lifelong craving for vocal music in middle school, when she decided to defy her parents and join the school musical (piano lessons just weren't as sexy after her brilliant stint as a "town daughter" in "Fiddler on the Roof"). Since then, both choral and a cappella music have become second nature. Alenda helped start and direct her first a cappella group in high school, co-founded The Mental Notes at Johns Hopkins University, and later became musical director for the Cornell Class Notes. Along the way, she also sang with the Peabody Conservatory Chorus, the Cornell University Chorus, the Stanford Symphonic Chorus, and the UC Berkeley University Chorus.
A lover of low notes and alto-buttery goodness, Alenda is delighted that she's now singing bass for The Loosies (her first time ever in an all-female a cappella group!). By day, she toils over her dissertation and shatters undergraduates' bizarre preconceptions about the world as a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.
CAREY: Carey is originally from Buffalo, NY where she graduated with a degree in Music Business. Music has always been an important part of her life. She is amazed at music's healing power and ability to bring people together. Carey has been singing with the Loose Interpretations for the past three years. In addition to A Cappella, she also studies voice and piano. Carey loves performing and feels very fortunate to sing with such a fun group of women!
HILARY:
Hilary is from the great square state of Colorado, though she counts her lucky stars to be currently residing in beautiful, random, hilarious San Francisco.
She discovered her passion for music and singing early in life, starting piano lessons at age 3 and church choir at age 5. From the feather boas and sparkly dresses of high school musicals and show choirs, to an illustrious turn as “wench/maiden” in a Colorado State University production of "The Flying Dutchman," and various all-county and all-state chorales in between, singing has long been an integral part of her life. She welcomes the opportunity to open a new musical chapter with the Loosies!
When not singing or wearing a feather boa, she can be found mingling with donors and theater-lovers at the beautiful American Conservatory Theater, throwing cocktail parties in her house in the Presidio, and writing for Gourmet Style Girl.
KARYNE (pronounced ka-reen): Karyne feels apprehensive writing about herself in the third person. Just kidding. She's a Bay Area native who enjoys singing, sandwiches, and puppies. Prior to the Loosies, she was in an a cappella group (the now-defunct Bolder Blend) at CU Boulder, where she sang as an alto and learned that she cannot, in fact, beatbox. But she still tries.
Since returning to the Bay Area a few years ago, she's performed at various local community theaters. Some of her favorite roles include: Maria in "Sound of Music," Nancy in "Oliver," and Susan in "Big: The Musical," all at Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City; Soupy Sue in "Urinetown" at Foothill Music Theatre; and The Baker's Wife in "Into the Woods" at Sunnyvale Community Players. When not singing, dancing, or singing and dancing, Karyne works as a copy editor for CNET and spends most of her time drooling over the latest tech gadgets while making sure that there aren't any typos in the copy she's reading. Oh, and she also has a quadruple black belt in the art of awesomeness.
KELLY: Originally from Washington, D.C., Kelly started singing in elementary school and hasn't stopped since! Among other musical pursuits, she was in her high school's choir and madrigals group and became president and concert manager of Rhythm and Blue, a co-ed a cappella group, while she was at Duke University. After a couple years of working in San Francisco sans singing, Kelly began to feel uneasy. She thanks Craigslist (and Kristy!) for bringing her back to her roots through the as of then unnamed Loose Interpretations. Kelly is one of the original members (and the first president) of the group. She temporarily left the Loosies when she moved to the suburbs of Chicago to go to business school at Kellogg. There, she helped to lead the Kelloggarhythms (admittedly the worst name ever!), the school's female a cappella group, and was a cast member in Special K!, Kellogg's musical comedy revue.
Having returned to San Francisco after graduation, gotten married, and put for-profit management consulting behind her, she is thrilled to be back in the group after a three year hiatus. Kelly works for a nonprofit management consulting firm and enjoys hiking, wine tasting, international travel, and hanging out with her friends and husband in her free time.
LISA: Lisa is from New York City but is happy to now call San Francisco home. Her love for a cappella started in college at the University of Vermont where she sang with the Cat's Meow. After graduating and moving home, Lisa sang with Treble, an all-female group in NYC. When she moved to San Francisco, searching out an a cappella group was first on the agenda. Thanks to good ol' Craig's List, she found the Loosies, and has been thrilled to be a part of the group for over six years. Aside from making a cappella magic with the rest of the gals, Lisa is a stay-at-home mom to her baby boy, as well as a singer in a '70s and '80s cover band called Total Eclipse.
LIZ: Liz is from good old Novato, Calif., where she was lucky enough to have grown up singing in a variety of choirs and musical theater shows. She graduated from the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!) where she earned a degree in international studies with a minor in music. While music history and theory may have gone in one ear and out the other, she is proud to have kept up with choir and will always enjoy trying new styles of singing. After returning to San Francisco to work in the world of nonprofits, Liz wound up at a Loosie's concert and was delighted to find a singing group with lots of talent AND a great sense of humor! She is pretty darn excited to now be a part of the Loose Interpretations, her first a cappella group!
MORGAN:
Morgan's first vocal performance was "You Are My Sunshine" at age 3, and she has been singing ever since. At the University of Chicago, when she wasn't hurling a discus or javelin, Morgan sang her heart out in Men in Drag (no men, no drag), an all-female a cappella group, and wailed away with U of C's gospel choir, Soul Umoja. Since moving to S.F. in 2007, Morgan has taken the stage with two local bands, Savior Funk and Level Up. She is pumped to be back in the world of all-female a cappella, as one of the newest members of the Loosies (and the California Bar!).
RACHEL:
Rachel spent her most of her childhood years in Portland, Ore., where the saving grace of her high school career was participating in show choir. She went on to become a part of All Rights Reserved, an all women's A Cappella group at University of Colorado, Boulder, where she attended school for her first year of college, although the details are fuzzy. Rachel then took some time off to travel around the United States where she learned how to play approximately 10 (count them, 10!!!) open chords on the guitar, and remains at about that same level today. However, her lilting melodies and sultry voice sometimes succeed in covering up the fact that her guitar playing hasn't improved in 11 years. In that time, Rachel sang in a jazz band in Xela, Guatemala, and has also sung in various bands around Portland.
In other realms of life, Rachel owns Madrona Wellness working as a personal trainer and holistic nutrition consultant. She also regularly gets lost in an a cappella Youtube video black hole.
ROE: Roe is SO happy she found the Loosies! After a year long tour as Veruca in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", she was looking for a change. So she figured, "Why not give the west coast a try?" She moved to San Francisco in September 2007 from Washington DC where she graduated from Catholic University of America with her Bachelor of Music. After 7 years performing all over the counrty in over 30 shows, she's happy to be "settled" in this great city she now calls home. These days she can be found teaching play and social skills to children with Autism and LOVES her monday night musical outlet with 12 of the best girls in the city!
SARA: Sara is originally from Tunis, Tunisia, and has been singing with friends, in choruses and pretty much everywhere she could since she was very small. She was introduced to a cappella in college where she sang with The Cornell Class Notes as well as the Cornell University Chorus. But then somehow after graduate school, work took over her life and she didn't sing for several years. It was a dark time. Thankfully, she realized that the lack of singing outlet was making her sad and searched till she found the Loosies and things have been much better since! In her spare time, she makes documentary films, runs, cooks and occasionally writes about it.
SUSAN: Susan is a California native who enjoys making fun of San Francisco hippies while enjoying the leftyness of her chosen home here in San Francisco. A choir nerd all her life, she gave up a chance to be a cheerleader in high school for the allure of a madrigral style choir, where she got to dance with boys in pantaloons and tights and had a cracker-jack sailor costume custom made for her by a local theater costume shop. She went on to found the TriTones, UC San Diego's first university-affiliated a cappella group, and produced the 'Tones first album, Size 12. Susan turned in her flip-flops and beat-up Volvo of the UCSD years for a career in web-based & enterprise search software development and product management in the Bay Area. She found both The Loose Interpretations and her husband on Craigslist and looks forward to a brilliant future with both.
SYDNEY: Sydney developed a passion for music at an early age. As a little girl, she practiced her grandmother's vibrato from the back pew in church and waited for piano lessons from the plastic-covered couches in Mrs. Levy's living room. That is, of course, until the fateful afternoon when she was sick all over the plastic-covered piano bench.
Raised in the small Northern California town of Grass Valley, Sydney continued her musical pursuits as a flutist , marching in the junior high band. Determined to be accepted into the coveted Chamber Choir at Nevada Union High School, Sydney's strategy for the next several years was to position herself behind the choral director and sing along loudly to church hymns, in the hopes that he would hear and remember her years later. Turns out he must have, because Sydney participated in many different groups in high school, even traveling to Europe to perform.
At Cal Poly, Sydney minored in music, singing, composing and conducting. It was here that she discovered her athletic side and began competing in triathlon and long distance running. A resident of San Francisco since 2000, Sydney is a sports physical therapist and Pilates instructor. Missing music from her life since moving to SF, she was happy to have discovered The Loose Interpretations and is even happier to be a part of the group!
go back to the top