Charles Cerf

As a youth Charlie sang with several Boston groups including the Harvard Glee Club, the Chorus Pro Musica, and the Handel & Haydn Society.  As soon as he arrived in Washington (1973) he joined the chorus of the Choral Arts Society of Washington and has sung primarily there ever since, though he did spend a year in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in the early nineties.  He has sung with the Washington Opera Chorus and with Revels.

When he became chorus President at Choral Arts he joined its board ex officio. After completing his term in 1978 he soon became an elected board member and has served there ever since (with one year off every seven); he has served on all its committees at various times. He has also spent more than thirty years on the local ACLU Board and has been its treasurer for about 20 years.

He is married to Cynthia Dunbar, MD, who joined CASW (and Charlie) in 1987. They have two daughters, both alumnae of the Revels Children's Chorus; the elder daughter was music director of the Princeton Tigressions, a female a cappella group. Charlie's father taught violin at Oberlin for 16 years and his students there included Dorothy DeLay and John Kendall. By no coincidence, the Cerf family summer residence is in Westport, N.Y., on Lake Champlain, eight miles from Meadowmount, where Ms. DeLay taught for many years.

When pressed, Charlie confesses he served a two-year term at Harvard Business School.  He once taught computer use, but quit when he no longer understood how computers work.  The Cerf-Dunbars live in Kalorama.