LSJ Alumni

Hey look! New alumni bios!

• Scott Adler
• Jake Bartolone
• Eric Bradley
• Stacie (Manning) Devaney
• Rebecca Ford-Paz
• Micaela (Kim) Fisher
• Michael Isip
• Kendy Hess
• Anne (Shapson) Kalis
• Jason Menges
• Ron Mourad
• Ed Peck
• Katie Reibert
• Jennifer SayGan
• Rob Snyder
• Michelle Weed
• Other Ghosts of LSJ Past

 

Scott Adler

Scott was an original member of LSJ and left in December of 2000. Scott "makes cool stuff" for Apple in California (he left us to work for that Jobs guy). He is married to Christy, has two children, and sings in One of Each, which had a song on the Dr. Demento radio show. Scott is remembered in Jive for his energy, humor, and resemblance to Anthony Edwards. He passed down the bass lore to Sperling, who begat Menges and Reeder, who begat Trajan, who begat Geoff and Nate, who actually sing what's on the page.

 

 

Jake Bartolone

Jake Bartolone is a ninja. A really awesome ninja. He was trained at the remote mountain camp of Tom Ninja (who is so awesome that all other ninjas are named after him). While there he co-founded the world's first ninja a cappella group, Silent But Deadly. You can't hear them perform because ninjas don't make noise. Duh. As a result, their CD has never sold a single copy, although it does double as an excellent missile weapon. Jake was in LSJ from 2003-2009.

 

Eric Bradley

Eric sang with LSJ from 1996-1998, and then moved to Los Angeles. He’s married, and enjoying a career as a studio singer, working in film, television, and album projects. He had fun returning to Chicago briefly in 2005 to film "The Break-Up", playing a Tone Ranger. Eric gets his a cappella fix in LA singing with Sixth Wave and The Vantastix (with Dick Van Dyke). Eric very kindly says, "I just remember every LSJ experience as pure joy. The people and the music were always top notch, making my four year experience in Chicago that much more memorable." See more at http://www.ericbradley.info.

Stacie (Manning) Devaney

Stacie actually had two tours of duty with LSJ. She was one of the original members (1994-2001), left for a while after having her first child, and was talked into returning by the rest of the group who missed her soprano voice (2005-2006). She is famous within Jive for leaving gigs stealthily immediately after their conclusion, leaving us to wonder if she had actually ever been there and earning her the nickname "Batgirl". Additionally, we used her jumper cables for the Older Than Dirt Schtick of jumpstarting a bass. Stacie now lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband Tim and their two kids, where she teaches elementary music.

Micaela (Kim) Fisher

Micaela sang with the University Chorale of Boston College, where she met Ed Peck (LSJ co-founder). After graduating, she moved to S. Korea to work as a television documentary researcher in Seoul. When she returned back to Chicago, she and Ed got together and created Lake Shore Jive. During those years (1994-96), Micaela worked at Chicagoland Television News, a cable news division of the Tribune Company, and then for WBBM-TV, a CBS owned and operated station. Micaela left LSJ to accept a job at WBTW-TV, a CBS affiliate in Myrtle Beach, SC, as a general assignment reporter, where she soon became the medical anchor and morning news co-anchor. It was as a medical reporter that Micaela learned about speech therapy. Since that time, Micaela left the television news industry, and earned her Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She worked at various Chicagoland hospitals before starting her own pediatric private practice, Smiling Star Speech & Language, LLC, in Hinsdale, IL where she lives with her dog (Shamalama ding-dong...really!) and her husband, Todd. Micaela enjoys keeping up with her friends from LSJ, and misses all the fun that came from being part of the group!

Rebecca Ford-Paz

Rebecca (Rivkah) was in Jive from about 2001-2005, and rejoined from 2008-2010 after returning from Boston with her doctorate. She is married to Rolando and lives in Edgewater. Her day job is as Staff Psychologist at Children's Memorial Hospital, where she coordinates an Anxiety and Mood Disorders Clinic for kids. Rebecca is the Spanish-speaking, scatting Jive member responsible for bringing "Chili con Carne" to LSJ. Spring Singers might remember Rebecca for her navel piercing and the fallout thereafter.

Michael Isip

Michael is the Executive Director, TV Production and Programming for KQED-TV, a public television station in Northern California. His background in television production includes work on numerous national, state and local public affairs programs. Recent national programs and documentaries include topics such as mental illness and homelessness, the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, and science and technology issues. Isip is also KQED executive-in-charge of California Connected, a statewide weekly public affairs program on public television. In 2003, Isip was one of five journalists from around the United States to receive a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellowship in Health. He was also one of seven journalists awarded a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health in 2000. Before coming to KQED, Isip worked five years at KVIE-TV in Sacramento as executive producer of news and public affairs and was a two-time winner of the California Journalism Award for Television Coverage of State Government and Politics. He began his career as a field producer at WLS TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago. Isip received his B.A. from Cornell University and his J.D. from DePaul University; he is a licensed attorney in Illinois.

Kendy Hess

Kendy is pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Colorado-Boulder and working part-time as an environmental attorney. Her dissertation deals with the attribution of moral obligations to highly organized groups (like corporations). She will soon be an Assistant Professor of Social Philosophy and Ethics at College of the Holy Cross. She is engaged to be married, much to the collective deep sorrow of The Grunyons, a group which sings at Spring Sing with LSJ. She has two cats and a dog. Kendy was in Jive 1997-2002.

Anne (Shapson) Kalis

Anne was in Jive from about 1997-2000. She and her husband Dave now live in Massachusetts with their two children. She is a full-time mom, and is starting to look for part-time work so she "can remain SANE!!!". Anne currently sings in two a cappella groups: In the Moment and Voice Over, which Dave sings in with her. While in LSJ, Anne sang the heck out of "Shadows in the Rain".

Jason Menges

Jason, who was in LSJ from 1998-2002, lives in Michigan with his wife and two daughters. He is a partner at the law firm at which he works. He remembers the infamous beach football game (and Hamilton letting us know he was open, by yelling "Chang, long!") as well as playing "blow pong" at a LSJ holiday party. He says, "Until then, I had no idea how little athletic ability we had within our group". Jason was the only member of Jive to appear topless in "LSJ: Behind the Music", and still treasures the Hanson calendar he was given in our holiday gift exchange.

Ron Mourad

Ron was in Jive from 1997-2001, is married to Emily, and has a son. He received his doctorate and specializes in the philosophy of religion and Christian theology. He works at Albion College in Michigan, where he teaches a broad range of courses, focusing on the epistemology of religion and its implications for theological method. In particular, he has written about religious uses of transcendental arguments, Reformed epistemology, religious experience and Christian mysticism, the ethics of belief, the place of religious convictions in political and academic discourse, and the distinctiveness of theological criteria of truth. He is currently collaborating on a book about Jeanne Guyon, a seventeenth-century Christian mystic. Also he once vomited on a beach playing football with LSJ, but the vomit was totally theologically philosophical. Ron is famous for his dry wit, and if he had written the last sentence it would have been much funnier. He "loves the singin".

Ed Peck

 

Ed was one of the two co-founders of Lake Shore Jive, along with Micaela Kim. Ed sang with the Heightsmen of Boston College during his undergrad years, and later found himself in Chicago to pursue Ph.D studies in Christian Ethics at Loyola University. One day in early 1994, the displaced duo from Boston (Ed and Micaela) were having a cup of coffee at Cool Beans coffee house and decided to rally post-collegiate a cappella talent living in Chicago by advertising for singers in The Reader. With some trepidation, they held auditions at the Chicago Public Library's main branch in one of its piano rooms. It was here that they discovered the other (amazingly talented) founding members of the group that would (after 6 months of deliberation) eventually name themselves Lake Shore Jive. Ed left the group in 1996 to concentrate on finishing his dissertation and to spend more time with Sarah, who would eventually become his wife. Before leaving Loyola, he helped start Loyolacappella, the university's first a cappella group. After getting married and living for five years in Philadelphia PA, Ed and Sarah moved to Cleveland Ohio, where they now reside along with their two children, Brendan and Julia. Ed is currently associate dean of The Graduate School at John Carroll University and continues to be interested in collegiate a cappella. In 2004, he founded Rhapsody Blue, John Carroll's first (and to date only) a cappella group. He looks forward to making the next reunion and continues to surf the web for updates on LSJ. Ed is impressed that Jive is still alive and kicking, especially with several founding members.

Katie Reibert

Katie studied number theory under John Nash at Princeton. She knows that 10 is a solitary number, solved the Goldbach conjecture at age 20, the Collatz problem at 22, and is nearly through with her proof of the Reimann hypothesis (none currently published because she's too busy working). Her home is built of Euler bricks with integer length space diagonals, and she thinks that the Happy Ending Problem is too trivial to bother with. Her most prized knowledge, however, is the significance of the number series 4 8 15 16 23 42 -it's the phone number of the most delicious pizza delivery place in the world. You may ask where area code 481 is, but she won't tell you, because this world still needs some mysteries, doesn't it?

Jennifer SayGan

Jen was in Jive from 1994-1995 and again in 1997. She now lives in LA with her husband Robert (who took the original group photos, found on the CD) and their two sons. Jen works as an actress, doing lots of commercials, an occasional soap opera, and "nothing huge in TV or film - yet. I'm mostly homework monitor, cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, and I make a mean lasagna." (Ed. note: You can check out Jen's fancy credits at her IMDB page!)

Rob Snyder

Rob lives in Chicago, where he is finishing his MBA. He works as a consultant, currently with Motorola. He remembers his first Jive gig was at a street fair near Wrigleyville, and Hamilton sang in his ear the entire show. Rob was the first member of LSJ to get in the group twice, falling under the "You were in the group very briefly and then left and then returned several years later and we already had tenors but you were too good to not add" clause.

 

Michelle Weed

Michelle's love of singing was fostered early on; she began singing in third grade with the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Children's Chorus, performing in operas including Carmen, Mefestofeles, Turandot and Un Ballo En Maschera. She participated in choirs and musicals through high school; one highlight was the opportunity to sing at Carnegie Hall in New York with her a cappella choir. In college, Michelle shifted focus to her studies and graduated from the University of Illinois in 2003 with a degree in advertising. In the working world, she missed singing so much that she sought out Lake Shore Jive, which she was in through the end of 2009. She recently started taking guitar lessons, and has played piano since second grade. Michelle lives in Chicago with her husband Jamie and their dog Lola.

Other Ghosts of LSJ Past

Alumni of LSJ who haven't sent us updates, but we still remember them fondly: Cari Alexander, Grant Born, Lauren Golden, Kurt Hanus, Trajan McGill, Julia Merchant, Erin Perkins, Rick Perrin, David Reeder, Carolyn Simpson, and Adam Wengert

 

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