Tanya Anderson

Tanya Anderson, singer and choir director, has directed choirs at the elementary through college levels. A 1996 B.A. music graduate of Walla Walla College, now University, she started her career by teaching music at Fountain View Academy in British Columbia, Canada, and then at Livingston Junior Academy in Oregon. Following her marriage to Gerald Schafer, also a music graduate of WWC, they traveled to Thailand, where they taught at Mission College, Tanya directing the choirs and Gerald teaching in both the music and science departments.

They now reside in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Gerald is completing a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and Tanya plans to enter the university's MLIS program in anticipation of pursuing a career as an academic music librarian. She has also served as Parish Administrator in a church near their home.

She has sung in the Immaculate Conception-St. Joseph Parish Choir in exchange for organ lessons, and she and Gerald sing in the candlelit Evensong at St. Andrews services and in the Pittsburgh Compline Choir, which performs in weekly services at the Heinz Chapel on the university campus.

Another activity they enjoyed in 2010 and 2011 was inviting a dozen friends to their home at Christmas time to sing through Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium (Christmas Oratorio) and other German carols brought by their guests.

ds/2012

Sources: Emails, Christmas letters, 2010 and 2011 from Tanya Anderson and Gerald Schafer; personal knowledge.