Melissa Beth Anderson-Clouzet

1983 - 

Melissa Anderson-Clouzet directs the choir and handbell choir and teaches voice at Campion Academy in Colorado, a position she has held since 2012. She previously was the director of those groups, voice teacher, and music chair at Shenandoah Valley Academy in Virginia for five years. In December of her last year at SVA, she married Yves Clouzet, who had been hired at the beginning of the school year to teach instrument lessons, assist in music, and teach algebra. They accepted music positions at CA at the end of that school year.

Melissa was born in Bemidji, Minnesota, the oldest of three children of Clinton Lewis and Leah Rachelle Anderson. She recently talked about her childhood and later years in a family where music is a central activity:

My parents were involved in a lot of music, and I began singing at an early age as part of a family singing group. As I got older, my brother and sister and I sang as a trio and recorded two CDs, Where the Roses Never Fade and What a Friend.

I started taking piano lessons from my mother when I was six or seven and then started trombone when I was in fifth grade. When I attended Maplewood Academy for my last three high school years, I was very active in music, singing as a soloist and in choir and other vocal ensembles and playing trombone in the band and other groups. During those years I studied voice with my aunt [Kimberly Anderson Wooster] and sang in her choirs.

Following graduation with honors from Maplewood Academy in 2002, Melissa studied music at Union College for two years before transferring to Andrews University. She studied piano with Ryan Wells and voice with Dan Lynn at UC and played in brass ensembles and the band, where she was principal trombonist.

While at AU, she studied voice with Stephen Zork and was a member of the select choral group, the AU Singers, traveling with them when they toured to Chile in 2005. Following completion of a B.Mus.Ed. cum laude in 2007, she accepted a position as music teacher at SVA. She started work on an M.Mus. in choral conducting at Andrews University in the summer of 2009.

Anderson-Clouzet is the most recent member of the Anderson family to teach music in Seventh-day Adventist academies, preceded by her father, Clinton, who has taught at several Adventist schools and is currently at Wisconsin Academy; an uncle, Curtis, now teaching at Upper Columbia Academy; and an Aunt, Kimberly (Wooster), who taught at Maplewood Academy.

ds/2008/13

Sources: Interviews with Melissa, 2008 and 2013; Minnesota Birth Index, 1935-2002; Interview with Clinton Anderson, 2011; Online sources (2012/2013).