Faculty and Staff
Laura Kakis Serper
Kairos Music Academy Founder and Artistic Director
Laura has vast experience conducting children’s choirs and serving as a community- builder through music programing. Ms. Kakis Serper received her degrees from the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music as well as attended Westminster Choir College, and the Aspen Music Institute. She has performed for many years as a soprano soloist and in operas and musical theatre. Her Greek heritage inspired the name of the Kairos and its choruses and her folksong choral arrangements have been sung by choirs world-wide, including at Carnegie Hall. She is also the Director of Choral Music at The Crowden School where her choirs have performed with the San Francisco Symphony for three seasons, most recently in Orff’s Carmina Burana. Ms. Kakis Serper was recognized at the California State Senate for over twenty years of excellent musical service to the community through Kairos Choir programs. She is dedicated to helping children find their voice for life through the art of singing.
Arkadi Serper
Kairos Pianist and Composer
Arkadi received his music education in Russia at the Gnesin State Musical College and Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He continues a distinguished career as a pianist, composer and music educator. Mr. Serper is Director of Piano and Composition, Music Theory and History at The Crowden School, and teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory in the Pre-College Department. He has written many choral compositions for Kairos Youth Choir, some of which have been published through the Henry Leck choral series. As an acclaimed composer, his symphonic and chamber compositions have been produced by several major orchestras. Kairos singers have the added benefit of performing tailor-made musicals composed by Arkadi Serper, with librettos by local writers. As a pianist, he continues to perform concerts, both as a soloist and a chamber musician.
Administrative Staff
Asher Witkin
Managing Director
Asher is a singer-songwriter from Berkeley, California. He began singing with Kairos Music Academy as a third grader in 2008, and immediately fell in love with the warm community and exceptional artistic instruction. He’s been working with Kairos in one capacity or another ever since he graduated in 2012. Since then, Asher has sung with Coldplay, Daveed Diggs, The Stone Foxes, Alexander Rybak, and recorded for Kehlani. He’s written with Graham Candy, Robin Brink, and grammy winner Dan Wilson. Asher graduated from Columbia College Chicago and Mannheim’s Popakademie with a Bachelor of Music in 2022. His newest project, bandcalledbeach, is signed to Duchess Box Records.
Asher Davison
Avghie/Anthos Director
Asher Davison, bass and countertenor, was inducted into music in the Santa Monica public schools; private clarinet study with David Sasaki, including Bach in transcription, convinced him early on of that rhythmic integrity enables expressive freedom. As a nonmajor but intensive musician at Yale, he performed the Copland and Mozart concertos and studied with David Shifrin. As a graduate student in molecular biology at MIT, Asher deepened into chamber music under the influence of John Harbison, as well as at Apple Hill chamber music camp through the coaching of John Steinmetz. Since returning to California in 2000, he has accompanied singers in numerous opera productions, become a professional chamber coach for Chamber Musicians of Northern California, and developed voice as his second instrument. A copyeditor, science education developer, and former high school biology and chemistry teacher, Asher directed the medieval chamber choir Coro Ciconia and currently performs regularly with the San Francisco Choral Artists, the all-genders treble choir 21V, and Voices of Silicon Valley. He serves currently as bass section leader at Piedmont Community Church, and in recent years at the UU of San Francisco and at St. John’s Episcopal in Ross. A highly appreciated voice teacher of young students formerly with the Forte program at Marin Country Day School, Asher’s own voice teachers have included Karen Clark, Ann Moss, Tim Krol, Christa Pfeiffer, and Kaaren Ray. Asher resides in Richmond Annex with his alto spouse Sarah Rose Cohen and their cloyingly adorable son and infant daughter.
Student Music Staff
Emile Serper
Student Music Theory Coach
Emile Serper started cello at the ancient age of six, yet he was singing with Kairos Youth Choir from the womb. Currently, he studies cello with Jeremiah Shaw and is a student in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Pre-College Program. He is the Co-Principal cellist in the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has performed on tour in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. He also studies composition with David Conte, is a two-season winner of the Kris Getz Composer’s Award, and has a published choral work entitled “Ave Maria”which is dedicated to environmental concerns. In addition to music-making, Emile enjoys mathematics, hiking, running, following baseball, and spending time with his recently-formed Kairos singers/alumni vocal acappella group “Evnia”, as arranger, singer and beatboxer. His Greek heritage comes to the fore in his love of friends and food!
