L to R top: Kim Lambert (harp), Jennie Siegmund, Kathryn Veditz, Janet Herman,
John Hopkins (guitar)
L to R middle: Ann Louise Wagner, Kathy Hopkins, Audrey Nickel
L to R bottom: Kathleen Loveless, Susan Krivin, Nancy Niles
Photo by Hank Niles.

ZAMBRA BIOS

Janet Herman first sang as a child with her mother and with the L.A. school district's all-city choir. She has a Ph.D. in Folklore from UCLA specializing in American folk music. Janet has been active in traditional music for three decades as an Irish session player, Sacred Harp singer, dulcimer teacher, and event coordinator. She provides vocals, tenor banjo, and mandolin for her family's Irish band, Dance Around Molly, and she sang with Cór Ainglí and the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chant Choir, among other groups. Janet co-founded and writes for the Music of Bhutan Research Center.

Kathy Hopkins can't remember a day without music in her life. She has been an all-around church musician and cantor since her youth, and has sung with the San Jose Symphonic Choir, the Irish Gaelic choir Cór Ainglí , ensembles of Gavilan College, and the Celtic Christian group Kingsbard. Kathy also plays several instruments including guitar, Celtic harp, recorder, flute, clarinet, harmonica, and English Handbells.

Susan Krivin's love of singing runs in her family, going back many generations. She began harmonizing with cousins as a child, while receiving formal musical training in various choral groups, and on piano and guitar. As an adult, she has enjoyed singing with friends, mostly informally, but found her musical home with Zambra in 1994. Susan's skills as a professional seamstress and designer are sometimes applied to Zambra's stagewear.

Kathleen Loveless, who arranges much of our repertoire, has been a part of Zambra since the conceptual phase. Katie grew up in a home filled with music. She remembers her parents teaching her to pick out horn lines in orchestral band recordings, and she silently practiced those harmonizing skills to pass the time during many a math class. She studied music theory at Cabrillo College where she sang in the Chorus and Chamber Singers. She served as cantor of Valley Catholic Church of Watsonville for ten years and as conductor of Mary Mc Laughlin's Cór Ainglí (Irish Gaelic choir) for four seasons.

Audrey Nickel fell in love with Irish traditional music, American and British Isles folk music, and Renaissance polyphony more or less simultaneously, and her life has been a cheerful mix of musical styles ever since - a fact that she credits in large part to her mother, who loved to sing everything from gospel and church hymns to show tunes and doo wop. Harmony is her first love, and she has sung in choirs for as long as she can remember, most recently Mary Mc Laughlin's Cór Ainglí Irish choir and the traditional Anglican choir at Calvary Episcopal Church in Santa Cruz.

Nancy Niles has enjoyed participating in the magic of vocal harmony since childhood. She attended voice classes with Michelle Rivard and Katherine Adkins at Cabrillo College, performed three seasons with the Bay Shore Lyric Opera, and most recently sang with the women's a cappella group, Windham Voices.

Jennie Siegmund began her singing career in her bedroom. She shocked friends by quietly singing backup vocals one day while someone was playing guitar and singing. From then on, she was fast tracked into her high school's two choirs and its small elite singing group, and ultimately majored in vocal music in college. She has performed in a local rock dance band and was also a member of Mary Mc Laughlin's Irish Gaelic Choir, Cór Ainglí .

Kathryn Veditz first began choral singing in junior high school and went on to perform at UCLA with the A Capella Choir, Concert Choir and Women's Glee Club. She has arranged several songs for Zambra and has produced and edited many of the music videos available on our youtube channel. Kathryn is also a composer and a singer-songwriter who plays piano, guitar, and flute. Her first album of original piano music, Caribou Lane, was released in 2021.

Ann Louise Wagner has been part of Zambra from its planning stages. She credits an excellent high school choir director with inspiring her, and also her sisters, with whom she harmonizes at every opportunity. She has studied several romance languages and is fascinated by fado, qawwali, Balkan, and bluegrass vocal forms.

John Hopkins (guitar) describes himself as “a casual multi-instrumentalist,” primarily on acoustic guitar, who especially enjoys Celtic and church music, usually playing and singing with his wife, Kathy. He has recorded with the groups Siloam and Kingsbard, and has performed additionally with Cór Ainglí and Spectrum Ensemble. Some of the other musical instruments John plays for fun include mandolin, bouzouki, Irish whistle, recorder, English handbells, fiddle, banjo, string bass and ukulele.

Kim Lambert (harp) enjoys playing music with Zambra as much as possible. Kim is a life-long musician who started on piano at age five. She learned recorder at school and eventually graduated to the flute, which is her main instrument. When her husband surprised her with a harp, shipped from a maker in Ireland that they had discovered while living there, there was no going back. That harp has since gone to harp heaven (which is how the angels keep their harps in stock) and was replaced by a beautiful Thormahlen Céilí, which she has played for the last ten years.