Bios

Carol Bauer (carol@milavocalensemble.com)

Alana Deranek (alana@milavocalensemble.com)

Alana Deranek has been making music since early childhood. Born into a family of musicians, she was raised on everything from jazz to classical to folk music. Her formal musical education includes over ten years of formal classical piano training under Dr. Joanne Link and several years of classical violin study. In college she began performing original pieces for solo acoustic guitar and voice in St. Paul and Minneapolis venues. Alana has sung as a recording artist for several styles of music including rock, American folk and hip hop. An avid student of Italian, she joined Mila Vocal Ensemble in 2005.

Anne Lies (anne@milavocalensemble.com)

Anne Lies would die without music. She has performed with Mila Vocal Ensemble since 1990. In addition to studying jazz and classical singing, she has studied vocal technique in traditional Bulgarian, Hungarian, Roma and Serbian styles. She plays piano, recorder and hammered dulcimer, and has studied Spanish, German, French and Bulgarian language. Her performance credits include singing tours of Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the United States, with two stints in the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Something of a stage-hound, Anne began her performing career at the age of six, when she gave command performances on the sidewalk in front of her family's South Minneapolis home. She is the tall one.

MiaLisa McFarland

MiaLisa McFarland was drawn to Mila because the group bridges two of her interests—musical performance and international peace studies.  On the musical side, MiaLisa made her debut at the age of three in a musical version of the Gingerbread Man.  Trained for musical theater she has performed in Alice in Wonderland, Hello Dolly, Babes in Arms, The Wizard of Oz, Grease, and Anything Goes.  Her musical credentials include: the children’s chorus for the Brooklyn-Queens Opera Company; New York City, All City Choir (which sang at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and toured Barcelona and Madrid); Cedar Crest College Choir, Singers and Madrigals; and East Stroudsburg University Jazz and Pop Singers directed by Bob Dorough.  On the academic side, while pursuing a Masters in Peace Education at Columbia University she researched conflict resolution within the former Yugoslavia and continued that research while pursuing her law degree at William Mitchell. Mila is unique because it allows for her to combine two areas of interests. As a new member of Mila she is excited to learn new styles of singing and more about Eastern European cultures.

Kerri Meyer

Kerri Meyer is among Mila's newest singers, having been a devoted fan since first seeing Mila perform in 2004 at Unity Church in St. Paul where she serves as the Director of Religious Education. Mila performed several pieces as a prelude to worship on one of her first Sundays on the job. Kerri was caught unawares by the astonishing beauty and sheer power of the music: she recovered from that initiation only barely in time to deliver the children's sermon. Like many other singers in the
ensemble, she knew she loved and needed music from a very early age, but she confesses that she has only recently learned that people are allowed to write music in 5/16 and 8/8. She is thrilled at the opportunity to sing with and learn from the women in the ensemble.

Marie Rule (marie@milavocalensemble.com)

Marie Rule joined Mila in the fall of 2006 after four years with Balkanalia, the Balkan music ensemble at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Under the direction of Dr. Donna Buchanan, Marie played clarinet and baglamas in addition to singing with the ensemble. On a recent tour with the group in Bulgaria she participated in masterclasses led by some of Bulgaria's most prominent folk music directors and performers—including Georgi Andreev, director of the Phillip Koutev Ensemble orchestra—and received private lessons from Snejanka Borisova (voice) and Dimitur Tisher (clarinet). On the academic side, Marie is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Musicology (writing a dissertation on Brahms), with a minor concentration in music of the Balkans. She is extremely delighted to be singing with the talented women of Mila.

Aurore Sibley

Aurore Sibley grew up playing classical piano and clarinet and in college studied with the late jazz great, Herbie Lewis. She played in various jazz groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years before discovering a love for folk music of many traditions. She formed a folk duo with her husband, Ben, and as well as singing, tinkered with a variety of instruments, including the mandolin, violin, guitar and percussion. She has a B.A. in humanities and music and a M.S. in Waldorf education. In 2000, she performed orchestral and chamber music with the Rome Opera Festival in Rome, Italy. She speaks German and has also studied Spanish, Russian and French. Aurore is thrilled to be a part of Mila vocal ensemble.

Jana Stow (jana@milavocalensemble.com)

Jana Stow grew up singing German and Norwegian folk songs at the piano with her mother, and learned about these cultures through language study and first-hand experience. She studied German, Norwegian, Russian and Croatian at various universities, and holds a Master's degree in German from Middlebury College. As a music scholarship recipient at Concordia College in Moorhead, she played viola in the orchestra and took classical voice lessons, singing in a variety of languages for vocal juries. During two years of study at German universities, Jana sang and toured with Camerata Vocalis of the Universität Tübingen and played in the orchestras of the universities of Mainz and Tübingen. She is currently studying the ancient Norwegian style of singing called "kveding," and has studied this under Anne Gravir Klykken and Olav Sem, both of Norway. Jana joined Mila Vocal Ensemble in 1998. She is a three-time award winner of A Prairie Home Companion's loon calling contest.

Phala Tracy

Phala Tracy is a classically trained harpist (BM Oberlin Conservatory of Music / MFA California Institute of the Arts) who also loves to sing Eastern European folk music! Before moving to Minnesota, she sang in a six-person Bulgarian women’s choir at the California Institute of the Arts, under the direction of Kate Conklin. Phala's singing extends to her native language of English as well. Her “Critter Songs” CD (Catalpa Tree Publishing, 2004) is a collection of original animal songs with pedal harp accompaniment - all about cats, fish, dogs, bugs, tree toads, fruit bats, imaginary lizards and a frig frog fairy dog wog. She is excited to be a part of Mila!

Aleksandra (Sanja) Veriga (aleksandra@milavocalensemble.com)

Born into a renowned Serbian folk music family, Sanja learned to sing and harmonize while learning to walk and talk. Music has always been an integral part of her identity. From piano lessons and choir singing to family, folk community events and festivals, she has experienced classical and folk music throughout her life. As a former member of Krsmanac Choir in Belgrade, whose repertoire focused both on folk and liturgical music, Sanja brings a unique cultural aspect to Mila Vocal Ensemble. Since becoming a member of Mila (formerly, the Ethnic Dance Theatre Vocal Ensemble) in 1989, Sanja has traveled and participated in numerous festivals and workshops and has taken private lessons abroad from Vesela Ilieva (Bulgaria) and Zorislava Vasiljevic (Serbia) in 1995, Valjo Yankov (Bulgaria) in 1999, and Liliana Galevska and Svetla Karadjova (Bulgaria) in 2000. In addition to her deep understanding of East European cultures, Sanja is fluent in Bulgarian and in all the languages of the former Yugoslavia. Several Serbian pieces in Mila's repertoire come from Sanja's family archive, which has gained recent fame in Belgrade.