The Choirs:
About the Staff
Catherine
Doyle Wesolek, founder and director of the Peninsula Girls Chorus, is sought throughout the Bay Area as a choral conductor, adjudicator, and
voice teacher. She is a graduate of Westminster
Choir College, where she studied under the batons of Zubin Mehta, Riccardo
Muti, Kurt Masur, Frauke Haasemann, Joseph Flummerfelt, and Robert Shaw. She has performed with the Syracuse Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She pursued
graduate studies at Cambridge University, England, where she specialized in treble-voice music and training children's voices. She studied form and analysis with noted San Francisco composer David Sheinfeld.
Ms. Wesolek has prepared choruses and soloists for the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, the El Camino Youth Symphony and Masterworks Chorale. Her choruses have worked in partnership with Chanticleer, the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic and Meet the Composer. Her choruses have performed in Canada, Russia, Hawaii, New Zealand, Egypt, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and the United Arab Emirates. Ms. Wesolek also taught in Alexandria, Egypt, where she created the first comprehensive choral music program at the American School, and trained her choirs to perform with musicians from the Cairo Conservatoire. She is a member of Chorus America and the American Choral Directors Association, where she has served as the Western Division Boy Choir Chair.
Bob Ghiorzi, a native San Francisco, has taught children's music in the Bay Area since 1983. For the past 20 years, Mr. G, as his students know him, has taught at Bacich Elementary School where he coaches and conducts five grade level choruses, comprised of over 500 Kindergarten through Fourth Grade singers. Mr. Ghiorzi’s students have performed hundreds of concerts, dozens of musicals, and in 1997 performed for President Bill Clinton. Mr. Ghiorzi earned a Bachelor of Music Education Degree from San Francisco State University in 1981, and in 1983 earned a teaching credential from San Jose State University. After studying with Katinka Daniel at California State University, Northridge for graduate work in Kodaly, Mr. Ghiorzi helped design the "Three Spires Music Festival" in Copenhagen and founded the "Tuscany International Children's Chorus Festival" in Florence. Mr. Ghiorzi has been the Brava conductor of the Peninsula Girls Chorus since 2000 and has administered four concert tours for the PGC. Mr. Ghiorzi is a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the California Music Educators Association.
Kara Ireland D'Ambrosio holds a Bachelor of Music Education Degree from the University of New Hampshire, a Master of Music Education Degree with a Kodaly emphasis from
Holy Names University in Oakland, a Graduate Certificate in Orff-Schulwerk from
Mills College, and a Graduate Certificate in Music for the Unborn from Silver Lake College in Wisconsin. Kara is a National Board Certified Teacher in Music Education/Voice (awarded by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards). As a National Board Certified Teacher, she plays an active role in charting the future of American education.
Ms. Ireland D'Ambrosio is currently the music teacher for grades K-8 at Woodside School, where she won a Grammy Gold in 2002 for Excellence in Music Education. Woodside has also won national recognition in 2002, 2003, & 2004 as one of the "Best 100 Communities for Music Education in America."Kara Ireland D’Ambrosio is a lecturer at San José State University where she teaches courses in music education. Ms. Ireland D'Ambrosio also is a support provider/mentor for the Take One! program at the National Board Resource Center at Stanford University.
Ms. Ireland D’Ambrosio serves on the California Music Educators Association Bay Section Board as the Special Representative for Classroom Music. The overall philosophy in her teaching is to instill a life long love of music in her students.
Karyn Silva earned her Bachelor of Music Education Degree from California State University, Hayward. She completed her teacher training at Holy Names University in Oakland, where she received a Master of Music Education Degree with a Kodaly emphasis. In addition to her training in Kodaly methodology, Ms. Silva received her Graduate Certificate in Orff-Schulwerk from Mills College and has recently completed courses exploring the use of the Orff-Schulwerk concept in teaching jazz to children.
Ms. Silva has been teaching classroom music and directing choruses at the elementary, jr. high and high school levels for the last 16 years. She was awarded the distinction of "Teacher of the Year" for the Lincoln Unified School District, in Stockton, CA in 1996. She is currently the head of the music department at the San Francisco Day School, where she teaches general classroom music as well as conducting the Upper School Chorus and Advanced Vocal Ensemble. In 2007 she was honored by the California Music Educators Associations as Classroom Music Teacher of the Year.
Ms. Silva is actively involved in music education and music teacher organizations. She was the Youth Choir chairperson for the Organization of American Kodaly Educators National Conference in 2004, and she is currently the general classroom music representative for the Bay Section of the California Music Educators National Conference in 2005 and 2006. She is also a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the Northern California Association for Kodaly Educators.