Andy Bouman has been the director of music at University Lutheran Chapel since 1993. He is a key part of the Chapel's innovative worship style, which blends music from a variety of traditions and cultures. Andy selects music for the Sunday services, plays the organ and piano, trains assisting ministers in singing, and recruits other musicians for special occasions.

Previously, Andy was the director of music for four years at Grace Lutheran Church in Richmond, California.

Originally from the Midwest, Andy began his musical training at an early age. As a child he attended Grace Lutheran Church and School (http://www.graceriverforest.org/school/index.html) in suburban Chicago, where he sang in the children's choir. He also started piano lessons at the age of 6 at nearby Concordia University (http://www.cuchicago.edu), where his father was a professor.

After his family moved to Columbus, Ohio when he was in junior high school, Andy started organ lessons at age 15 at the Conservatory of Music at Capital University (http://www.capital.edu). He also landed his first musical position at age 16 as assistant organist of Hope Lutheran Church in inner-city Columbus.

Andy headed off to college at Valparaiso University (http://www.valpo.edu), where he was a member of Christ College (the honors program), spent a semester abroad studying in Germany, and eventually received his B.A. with majors in Philosophy and Humanities. While at Valpo, he also studied organ performance, served as a volunteer organist for daily chapel, and toured the Midwest and the East Coast with the Schola Cantorum, the university's chapel choir.

After a year in Washington DC studying at the Lutheran Center for Theology and Public Life (http://www.ltsg.edu/theologyandpubliclife/aboutlctpl.htm) and serving as an intern for U.S. Representative Floyd Fithian (D-Indiana), Andy moved west to Berkeley, California, where he earned an M.T.S. degree from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (http://www.plts.edu) and later was a doctoral student in English literature for three years at the University of California (http://english.berkeley.edu).

For his day job, Andy currently is a health content editor and product manager for kp.org (http://www.kp.org), the public Web site of Kaiser Permanente, a nonprofit health plan. Previously he was a publications editor for the Haas School of Business (http://www.haas.berkeley.edu). Before that, he was associate director and publications editor for the National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, a research center at Berkeley's Graduate School of Education (http://www-gse.berkeley.edu).

Andy lives with his wife, Holly Halligan, in a 1923 Craftsman-style "airplane" bungalow in Oakland’s historic Rockridge district (http://www.rockridge.org). When he's not working on home improvement projects, he's probably pursuing his other passion in life, swing dancing (http://www.nextgenswingdance.com). For many years, Andy has been a judge at national swing dance competitions and the event co-director for Boogie by the Bay (http://boogiebythebay.org), a four-day swing dance weekend in October that brings about 1,400 dancers to the San Francisco Bay Area.