Clerestory features Jesse Antin, Kevin Baum, John Bischoff, Dan Cromeenes, Chris Fritzsche, Tom Hart, Clifton Massey, Jim Monios, and Justin Montigne. Clerestory is the Bay Area's acclaimed nine-man classical a cappella ensemble. Veterans of SF's finest professional vocal groups, Clerestory's singers, from countertenor to bass, remain members of the Bay Area choral community and pride themselves on providing unparalleled performances to local audiences. Clerestory is named for cathedral architecture whereby upper windows let in daylight. The ensemble tells the "clear story" of the music it performs through sophisticated performances grounded in decades of experience singing together. Clerestory has been described as "distinctive voices blending in a gorgeous sound" by San Francisco Classical Voice, and "a model of what a great choral concert should be" by BBC Magazine columnist Chloe Veltman. Clerestory's website, www.clerestory.org, features free archived concert recordings and a private e-mail list sign-up. Clerestory is a tax-exempt non-profit that relies on the generosity of its community to sustain its progressive mission.

Clifford (Kip) Cranna (PhD, Musicology, Stanford) is Direc­tor of Musical Administration at SF Opera. He has served as vocal adjudicator for numerous groups including the Metropolitan Opera National Council. For many years he was Program Editor and Lecturer for the Carmel Bach Festival. He lectures and writes frequently on music and teaches at the SF Conservatory of Music. He hosts the Opera Guild's "Insight" panels and intermission features for the SF Opera radio broadcasts, and has been a Music Study Leader for Smithsonian Tours. In 2008 he was awarded the SF Opera Medal, the com­pany's highest honor.

Hester G. Gelber, Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford (PhD, Wisconsin),specializes in late medieval religious thought. She teaches courses on philosophy of religion as well as medieval Christianity. She has written extensively on medieval Dominicans, including: Exploring the Boundaries of Reason: Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot OP and most recently It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford 1300-1350. Her current book project is a study of the development of the medieval religious cosmos as a mythologized system of retributive justice.

Suzanne Guerlac received her BA in philosophy from Barnard College and her PhD in French from Johns Hopkins University. She is professor of modern French studies at UC Berkeley, having taught previously at Emory University, the University of Virginia, Yale and Johns Hopkins. She is the author of three books. The first, The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautréamont and the Esthetics of the Sublime concerns the esthetics of French romanticism and modernism. The second, Literary Polemics, Bataille, Sartre, Valéry and Breton, concerns competing theories of literary art in the first half of the twentieth Century. Her third book, Thinking in Time, is an introduction to the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Most recently she has co-edited a book of essays on the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Derrida and the Time of the Political. She has published a number of articles on Victor Hugo here and in France.

Stephen Murray is Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art at Columbia University. He was educated at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1986 and currently serves as Director of the Media Center for Art History, Archaeology & Historic Preservation. His publications include books on the cathedrals of Amiens, Beauvais and Troyes; his current work is on medieval sermons, story-telling in Gothic, and the Romanesque architecture of the Bourbonnais. His field of teaching includes Romanesque and Gothic art, particularly involving the integrated understanding of art and architecture within a broader framework of economic and cultural history. He is currently engaged in projecting his cathedral studies through the electronic media using a combination of three-dimensional simulation; digital imaging and video, through the Mapping Gothic France Project at www.mappinggothicfrance.com.

Tim Rayborn, an acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, plays dozens of musical instruments from medieval Europe, the Middle East, and the Balkans, including lutes, plucked strings, flutes, and percussion. He has recorded on more than 30 CDs for a number of labels, including Gaudeamus, Wild Boar, Harmonia Mundi, EMP, and Magnatune. Tim lived in the UK for seven years, taking his MA and PhD in medieval studies at the University of Leeds, and working as a musician. He has toured the US and Europe extensively from Ireland to Turkey, including concerts at the York and Beverley Early Music Festivals, Alden Biesen Castle in Belgium, Bunyloa in Majorca, and Spitalfields Festival in London. He has performed for BBC in the UK and Channel Islands, toured in Canada and Australia, and worked with folk musicians in Marrakech and Istanbul. He has taught at the SFEMS Medieval/Renaissance summer workshop and Pinewoods Early Music week in MA, and has appeared with many early music performers, including Ensemble Alcatraz, Anne Azema, Margriet Tindemans, Susan Rode Morris, Tom Zajac, and Sinfonye. In addition to solo work, he currently performs with Patrick Ball and collaborates regularly with Shira Kammen. www.timrayborn.com
  
Robert A. Scott is Associate Director Emeritus, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He was previously Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. He is the coauthor of Why Sociology Does Not Apply (1979); author of Making of Blind Men (1969); editor of several collections of essays about stigma, deviancy, and social control; and author of numerous articles, book chapters, and essays on related topics. His most recent publications include Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief (2010) and The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral (2003, 2006). He continues to do research and write books about medieval gothic cathedrals of Europe.