On this page: Julie Manning, Josh Seitz, Judy Corwin, Bruce Hauge

Julie Manning has been in the alto section of CRS since the first concert ten years ago. Not only was she a founding member, but she served four years as the first president of the board and helped CRS wade through the paper work to become a 501c(3) organization [that’s a reminder that your contributions are a deductible item].

Julie brought good choral experience with her to Corvallis. In addition to a choral background in high school, she sang in choirs at Lewis and Clark College and sang for two years in the Oregon Repertory Singers in Portland under the direction of Gil Seeley. Julie also sang in a double octet as a Norman Leyden singer in Portland. “Memorizing the music for performances was easy,” she said, “memorizing the choreography was hard.”

In January, Julie will begin a new role as Mayor of Corvallis. She will continue to serve as Vice President for Development, Marketing, and Public Relations for Samaritan Health Services, where she is completing her 25th year. Julie said she wants to continue singing with CRS—“It’s such fun to sing with that group; seeing a group of talented singers reach a high performance level in just a few rehearsals is a thrill.”

Before starting at Samaritan, Julie taught high school journalism in Portland and then put her Boston U. M. S. degree in Journalism to work as features editor of a Helena, Montana newspaper.

Julie and her dentist husband, Walter, have two sons: Jackson is in advertising in New York City and Patrick is a senior at OSU.

Josh Seitz, a tenor in CRS, comes from a musical family. At one point, five Seitz siblings were singing in the Heart of the Valley Children’s Choirs. Two of Josh’s sisters joined him in the cast of Sound of Music produced at WOU when he was in seventh grade. Josh was cast as Friedrich with sisters in the parts of Brigitta and Gretl—perhaps this gave rise to Carol Nelson and others referring to them as “the von Seitz Family Singers.”

Josh received undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education at OSU. He was active in “Outspoken,” a men’s a cappella group at OSU for which Josh did both composing and arranging. He continues to do some arranging for the group and wants to do more composing in the future.

Singing in CRS has been a great experience for Josh. He says, “I like the speed at which we move from no knowledge of the music to reaching a performance-level quality in just a few rehearsals. It happens because the singers are all of a high enough caliber that when you throw Dr. Z into the mix, we just gel.”

Josh sings a lot—he even answers the phone in song at Blockbuster Video where he works (might be interesting to call just to find out). Growing up in such a musical family, Josh says that it was common for someone to begin singing something and have everyone else chime in.
Josh would like to have a music teaching job somewhere. In the mean time, he assists Emily Thielen Mercado with the Men’s and Women’s Choirs at CVHS, and substitutes for music teachers around the Willamette Valley as often as they’ll let him.

Judy Corwin, the oldest of six children, organized and accompanied annual Christmas productions the children put on for their parents. Judy, the pianist, says she was always the accompanist for family music activities—and there were a lot of them. Her Dad conducted professional choral and orchestral groups. Her Mother studied voice at Juilliard in New York City. One can only imagine what the house sounded like with each child playing an instrument and with lots of singing.

Judy, an alto in CRS and the newest member of the CRS board of directors, says she has always loved to sing. She had more time in the spotlight, though, as a gymnast at West Virginia University. She says her work on floor exercise and balance beam gave her confidence about performing in public. Judy continued to focus on gymnastics in Corvallis where she has choreographed floor exercises, has been a judge, and served as the event manager for many NCAA gymnastics tournaments at OSU.

Gymnastics confidence faded quickly when Judy decided to audition for CRS three years ago. “I was petrified,” she said. “Mr. Z made me feel so comfortable that I got through it and when I finished and he said, ‘We want you to sing with us,’ I was like a little kid thrilled and full of excitement.” The feeling continues and is renewed when Judy experiences a rehearsal or performance where “things come together and you realize you’ve been a part of something great.”

When she’s not singing, Judy is Director of Marketing and Public Relations for The Corvallis Clinic. She and husband Mike have three children—a son designing websites in Portland, a son pitching baseball for Texas Tech, and a daughter in the 8th grade at Franklin School.

Bruce Hauge made a valiant effort to include some music in his first-term schedule at OSU, squeezing a Music Appreciation course into his engineering curriculum. “But it didn’t appreciate me,” says Bruce; “I got a ‘D’.” (For the record, he repeated the course two years later and earned an ‘A.’)

Bruce gained his first choral awareness by singing in the folk mass at church, while a student at South Salem High. (He couldn’t sing in the school choir, because it conflicted with Physics class.) Years later, friends urged him to audition for OSU’s production of HMS Pinafore. He was cast, and the musical theatre bug bit. He has appeared in several musicals, including Showboat and Anything Goes, his favorite. By this time, daughter Rachel was singing with the OSU Chamber Singers and raving about her wonderful director, Steve Zielke. Bruce saw an ad for auditions for the newly forming Corvallis Repertory Singers, decided to give it a try, and became a charter member.

Bruce looks forward to every CRS program–and the preparation for it. He continues to be amazed “that we are performing music written centuries ago, yet we can put ourselves in the mind-set of the original singers.” He likes the expectation that individual singers prepare responsibly on their own, going so far as to have created some of his own electronic learning devices.

Bruce is an electrical engineer at Aptina Imaging in Corvallis, specializing in IC image sensors. He and Claire, his wife of 30 years, are the parents of three daughters: Rachel, Nicole, and Eileen. Bruce and Claire enjoy traveling internationally at least every two years, their most recent venture being a cruise on the Danube. They have also ridden together on two Cycle Oregon trips.

To read more bios click on the name below:

Bio list 1: Betty Busch, Jerry Bowman, Gale Hazel, Gary Tiedeman, Ken Gryte, Virginia Stockwell, Brett DeYoung, Amy Gilson

Bio Page 2: Karen Drouhard, Paul Pritchard, David Hockman-Wert, Patty Gerig, Anna Rikli, Joseph Battrick, Emily Thielen-Mercado, Pete Butler