CASA - The Contemporary A Capella Society

Mindy Thomas is no longer watching someone else live her passions.

Thomas, 49, used to think that singing a cappella music and running races were things that “somebody else could do”. Today, she’s realizing that harnessing the unknown just takes a bit of passionate follow-through and some hard work.

Thomas, a native of California’s Sierra foothills, has always been interested in the vocal arts. The daughter of a “passionate music lover” mother and orchestra conductor father, her development as a musician was organic and natural from birth.

“I was perpetually in school choruses, from grade school through high school,” she wrote in an email. “My musical energies were primarily focused in a different direction [from voice] though, as it was my mother’s dream that I become a concert pianist.”

Despite her rigorous piano-focused studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco State University, Thomas’ vocal performance résumé is also extensive.

While at SFSU, she performed the masterworks of Brahms, Beethoven and Mahler under the direction of Louis Magor. Since then, she has performed with numerous early-music vocal ensembles and chamber choirs across the country, and has been involved with the local theater scene in her current home in Smartsville, CA. 

But her interest in contemporary a cappella was sparked during her college days.

After a grueling practice session, a singer friend she was accompanying came to her practice room and asked him to follow her. He led her to the foyer of the music building where she was greeted by three other singers, the three of them and her friend making up an SATB quartet.

“They had me stand in the middle of this amazing reverb chamber and they stood in the four corners and sang ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ – the Gene Puerling/Manhattan Transfer arrangement,” she wrote. “That was thirty years ago and I still get goosebumps thinking about it. But it was a life changer for me in a lot of ways. I knew the Manhattan Transfer and a few other a cappella performers, but I had always thought of a cappella as something that someone else did.”

Not anymore. Today, Mindy Thomas is one of North California’s CASA Ambassadors and a regular contributor to CASA.org’s web content. This spring, she reviewed a House Jacks performance in San Francisco and got to meet the guys after the show.

“When I met the Jacks after the show, I suddenly realized how exciting this all was to me and how I really wanted to be more involved in the whole contemporary a cappella ‘scene,’” she wrote.

The rest was history.

Thomas jumped at the opportunity to fuse her rejuvenated passion for a cappella music with her newfound adoration for running. At 49-and-a-half years old this June, Thomas has only been running for a couple of years, but feels inspired by the physical challenge the activity poses.

“I was trying to figure out some way to get some exercise and the thought went through my head that running was out of the question, whereupon I suddenly thought, ‘Hold up, who decided that?’ and that was it,” she wrote. 

When she discovered the annual Sacramento-based 5k Race for the Arts (August 28), she decided she’d run it for CASA. Race for the Arts is a nonprofit organization that raises funds, increases awareness and helps build audiences for California’s nonprofit performing, cultural, and visual arts organizations and for school music, drama, and art programs. The mission of the race, as well her love of a good challenge, motivated Mindy to run the race for CASA.

Still, she doesn’t have delusions of grandeur. Instead, she wrote that she has chosen a very humble mission to better herself and hopefully, in the process, make some money for a non-profit she believes in.

“I’ll never be an elite runner, and that’s okay. I haven’t even gotten to the point of being able to run the whole distance at once. But that’s okay too. ..It’s sort of like my a cappella journey too, in a way,” she wrote. “I thought it was something somebody else could do, but not me… and then I had a lot of fits and starts and challenges to get it going. “

“Really what’s important is that I keep doing it, keep challenging myself to be better at it, and enjoy the progress and accomplishment. Kinda like life, you know?”

Interested in Mindy’s run? Donate to her on behalf for Race for the Arts! E-mail her at runmindyrun@gmail.com to contribute and for more information.

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About the author:
Christopher Diaz is on the Board of Directors of CASA, and is its Public Relations Director. Read his bio here: http://www.casa.org/boardmembers