About the GSCC

Wendy McKee is originally from Chicago, Illinois and graduated from DePaul University with a Bachelor of Music degree with an emphasis on Vocal Performance. She was the Founder and Artistic Director of Brava!, a professional women’s ensemble from 2001–2009 and also served as the Music Director for St. Paul UCC in Palatine, IL from 2002–2009. McKee was the Artistic Director for the Palatine Children’s Chorus from 2002 to 2006, where she conducted the top 3 of their 5 choirs. In 2009, Wendy was promoted to manage the JW Pepper store in Kent, WA, which stalled all of her choral directing and singing activities. She worked extensively with Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska ACDA groups and was also on the board of the NW ACDA as the Industry Representative. Wendy worked with ACDA National from 2010 to 2016 on their National Convention booklets as well. In 2016, she retired from JW Pepper in order to spend more time with her daughter. Wendy’s daughter sings in Rainier Youth Choirs, which she loves. Since 2017, Wendy has served on the Board of RYC as the Marketing Chair person, assisting them in all manners of marketing and working with the fundraising team as well.

Scott Kovacs is a professional choral musician and non-profit arts administrator in the Seattle area, currently serving as Executive Director of the professional choir Emerald Ensemble (which he helped found) as well as the Executive Director of the Medieval Women’s Choir. He is the immediate Past President of the Compline Choir at Saint Mark’s Cathedral (where he also sings) and has an active role in the musical life of Saint Mark’s. His arts consulting and leadership group, Arcadia Arts, assists small and mid-non-profits with development and organizational challenges. He also teaches private voice to a growing number of students with an emphasis on the aging voice. He is a founding (past) director of the Greater Seattle Choral Consortium and helped create the Seattle Sings Choral Festival, which he co-chairs.

Stephanie Harris is a lifelong choral singer, having sung throughout primary and secondary school and in the Pembroke College (Brown University) Glee Club under the direction of Erich Kunzel. Stephanie currently sings with the Bainbridge Chorale.

She is a past board member of the Bainbridge Chorale, serving over the years as Secretary, Treasurer and Vice President. In 2009, she retired from board service to become the chief administrator, assuming the post of Executive Director in 2014. Believing strongly in the Bainbridge Chorale mission of engaging the community in choral singing activities, Stephanie instituted several ongoing public-participation programs, including the annual Messiah Sing-along, a family-oriented caroling event each December, and a series of summer choral reading events.

Stephanie is a charter member of Schola Nova, a women’s ensemble that sings the office of Evensong monthly at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on Bainbridge Island. In 2019, Stephanie co-founded, with colleague Ginnilyn Hawkins, the Constellation Choir, a chamber ensemble that performs with the Bridges String Orchestra, a Bainbridge Island-based ensemble. Her other passion, in addition to choral singing, is cultivating an ever-expanding collection of lilies at her Bainbridge residence.

Dr. Daniel A. Mahraun, in his third season as Artistic Director of the Seattle Bach Choir, is a freelance choral conductor, lyric baritone, and editor/arranger of music for choirs.

Since 2010, he has worked with the early music group The Rose Ensemble as an archivist, researcher, transcriber/editor, and performer. As such, he was instrumental in the production of their two most recent CDs, A Toast to Prohibition and Treasures from Baroque Malta.

Mahraun has served as Director of Choral Activities at Minnesota State University Moorhead and at Bethany College (Lindsborg, Kan.). For 10 years at the latter, he also served as Music Director of the Bethany Oratorio Society, whose appearances during the annual Messiah Festival of the Arts consisted of annual performances of Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. During several years on the Big Island of Hawaii, he also guest conducted with Early Music Hawaii and the Hilo Community Chorus.

He holds degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Northern Iowa, and Wartburg College.

Jeremy Edelstein is a conductor, singer, arranger, & writer new to the Seattle area. This year marks his maiden voyage as artistic director of the Northwest Chamber Chorus, and he sings and conducts regularly with groups across the city. He comes to the PNW from Chicago, where he earned a master's degree in choral conducting at Northwestern University under the mentorship of Grammy-winning conductor Donald Nally, and founded the Twinbird Project, a flexible vocal ensemble interested in presenting innovative concert programs in unconventional spaces. He feels equally at home with singers and instrumentalists, in a variety of genres, and collaborating across art forms. Poetry, fresh air, new music, and good coffee are the keys to his heart.

Rachelle Bunch's journey began in Eastern Washington, where she delved into her passion for jazz voice, piano, and singing. At Columbia Basin College in Pasco, WA, she honed her skills under the mentorship of Dave Cazier, performing with the vocal jazz group Freeform and learning the art of arranging vocal jazz charts. Continuing her musical education at Central Washington University, Rachelle contributed to both choral and jazz ensembles, further developing her talents in arrangement for vocal jazz groups.

A unique opportunity led her to Las Vegas, where she spent six years as a gondolier, serenading passengers with opera while navigating the canals of the Venetian. Amidst this adventure, Rachelle founded a professional caroling group and collaborated with the Las Vegas Philharmonic through the Las Vegas Masters Singers.

Since 2018, Rachelle has served on the board of directors for Wellspring Ensemble, channeling her passion for choral music into enriching her musical journey. This passion also serves as a respite from her demanding role as a community manager in the fast-paced world of multi-family housing in Seattle.

In recent years, Rachelle has ventured into composing choral music, embarking on an exciting new chapter in her musical exploration.

Dr. Yvette Burdick has enjoyed a wide breadth of music leadership responsibilities over the course of more than thirty years as a music professional and found a warm and welcoming home in the Skagit Valley Chorale, which she has led since 2014.

Yvette is a skilled singer and director who has performed in summer stock musical theatre, stage-directed Gilbert & Sullivan, and conducted opera and musical theatre. She is a proficient user of music technology software, regularly recording and editing multi-track choral versions of pieces in her home studio. She sang for Robert Bode in Choral Arts Northwest and is currently singing for Rebecca Rottsolk in Mirinesse Women’s Choir.

At North Seattle College Yvette taught the internationally diverse College Choir, preparing novice singers for exuberant and heartfelt performances, and she has been a longtime faculty member at the Midsummer Musical Retreat.

Yvette holds Bachelors’ in Music and English Literature from the University of Puget Sound (Ho Adelphians!), Masters in Choral Conducting from the U. of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and a DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Washington.

Ellen Taft is originally from the North Shore of Chicago, Illinois, and only started singing in church choirs in her forties. Before that she lived in West Germany and the UK, where she taught English as a foreign language, before embarking on a career in theatre as an actor, director, producer and dialect coach. After completing the Advanced Diploma of Voice Studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, in 1989, Taft moved to Seattle and worked as a voice, speech, dialects teacher for actors and also specialized in Accent Reduction for foreigners, while singing in various church choirs. In 1984-85 at the University of Minnesota, she produced and directed two stage shows in German, in Philadelphia she was the founder and Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Shakespeare in the Park. In Seattle she produced two shows for Le Théâtre Français de Seattle, and joined Arion choir-the German chorale; however when it folded after the pandemic, she founded La Chorale Francophone de Seattle, an all French chorale. She is a longtime member of both the Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association and the French-American Chamber of Commerce. Taft’s strengths do not lie in her musical ability, but rather in her administrative abilities, linguistic abilities and her American can-do approach to life.