Who am I and why would you choose to work with me?

◦ I have a Masters degree in opera performance
◦ I’ve been singing since the age of eight when I first started lessons
◦ Former member of NATS (The National Association of Teachers of Singing) and local chapter secretary
◦ Experienced teacher with 30 years of instruction time at all levels
◦ I have taught at the university level, through a conservatory, and privately

These are all my credentials. But the real reason you would want to work with me is not some thing that you will find in the letters behind my name or the number of years I’ve been teaching. It’s not because I know the most about the anatomy of the voice or because I can teach you all the jargon that musicians use to communicate.

You want to work with me because in addition to being qualified to work with voices, being experienced working with voices, I understand what it’s like to be a beginner at something and to be scared. I understand how powerful music and specifically voice work can be and how much it can crack you open and teach you about yourself. And I won’t let you navigate those things alone.

I’ve worked with instructors and coaches who have a vast and incredible knowledge about music and the voice and are working professionals in the industry, and when it came to the psychological and emotional components of using the voice, they fell short. They were there to work on the technique and the style and all of those things, but they didn’t help me to access the deep meaning of the music or my own inner truth. And to me, at this stage in my life, I think that was a disservice to the art form. Or at least certainly to me as a human being.

The word holistic gets thrown around a lot with respect to many things, but when it comes to working with voices, it’s the best word I can think of to describe how I approach things. I try to look at the student as a whole human being and to teach to them accordingly. I am not a therapist, and I’m careful not to delve into that arena because that is not a place I have training, yet I have found that the way I work can often be cathartic for my students and give them a place to explore themselves and their self expression.

One of the ways I like to work with students is to have them reflect back to me what they are experiencing in their own bodies and come up with their own language for it. I provide a framework from conventional voice pedagogy, but at the end of the day, I want students to understand themselves better, so I ask them to come up with their own imagery and words that they can reference when they go to practice.

If you are looking to become a professional opera singer, I’m not sure how you ended up here, haha, but I’m probably not the teacher you’re looking for. If you’re looking to understand yourself, looking to express yourself, looking to do breath work, looking to connect to yourself and your body, looking to relieve stress and you’re looking for a teacher who will help you through some of what that brings up for you - drop me a line.