Kaitie Ty Warren (she/they)
(Founder, Co-Leader)
Kaitie Ty Warren grew up in Los Angeles and the Bay Area CA, and for most of her first few decades worked in theater (as an actor, producer, writer, director, marketing team member, lighting and sound designer, dramaturg, executive director, and technician.) She has a BA in Theater and a minor in Music from U. of Puget Sound, worked as a scenic carpenter for Aurora Theater in Berkeley CA, and co-founded and ran Balagan Theatre in Seattle, WA in its early years. As an adult she moved back to Los Angeles to work in film and television, and there she discovered community singing which changed her life. After a bad injury, she moved to the Bay Area to heal and wound up forming Living Room Choir out of her own need to hear the harmonies she’d grown to know while singing in Goldenbridge Choir in LA. Maggie Wheeler is her closest singing and songleading mentor, to whom she is forever grateful. In 2016 Kaitie attended Ubuntu Choirs Network‘s CCLT (Community Choir Leadership Training) in Victoria BC and has never looked back.
Sara Stutz (she/her)
(Founding Member, Co-Leader)
Sara Stutz grew up singing in a musical family, studied music in college and eventually became a pediatric physical therapist, using song and dance to engage and encourage clients. Along the way, Sara has performed and co-directed musical theater, light opera, and garage bands, performed early music for years with Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble (WAVE), explored circle singing participation and leading with David Worm and along the way had the great fortune to encounter the community music world in 2015 in Kaitie Ty Warren’s living room. The supportive and inclusive nature of community music with its oral tradition and heart-filled songs, combined with the philosophy that it is everyone’s birthright to sing immediately felt like home and the thing that had been missing in Sara’s musical life. Sara is a founding member of Living Room Choir and is deeply grateful for Kaitie Ty Warren’s mentorship in the realm of song leading and building safe and welcoming community space.
Deborah Leeds (she/her)
Music Assistant
Deborah has loved singing and harmonizing for as long as she can remember. One spectacular miracle in her life occurred when, after a brief exposure to Maggie Wheeler’s Ubuntu Choir in Los Angeles, she prayed to find something similar in Berkeley. And then, lo and behold….discovered Kaitie and the Living Room Choir five blocks from her home. Ta-Da! She has been singing with the LRC since 2016.
As a Couples Therapist, Deborah is keenly attuned to the relational space that exists between people, and is both amazed and not surprised at the space that is co-created when people sing together. She considers it sacred, and is thus deeply moved to be a part of the Living Room Choir.
Deborah has studied song leading with Heather Houston, and has recently seen “that portal” open, wherein songwriting comes through. She is thrilled (I am!) to be assisting Kaitie Ty Warren and Sara Stutz do their magic with LRC-ANEW.