This article is a tribute to the truly great voice teachers that make all the difference for singers learning classical technique. Not all teachers have the ability to connect with a student’s needs. Teaching singing is a craft that is hard as hell because each student internalizes direction with unique responses, learns at their own pace, and approaches their sound with physical habits built over a lifetime. The successful teacher assists technique building with mastery of scientific pedagogy, music history, kinesthetic memory, and genre-specific styles. They are our heroes.
Most music majors agree that their private voice teacher is an important part of their lives, let alone their degrees and vocal development. The one-on-one time spent in the voice studio is when trust is established. Some teachers are supportive cheerleaders and some are strict taskmasters. At different stages of vocal development, your teacher might serve as a momentary therapist or a life coach. This process draws many students and teachers very close and drives others apart because it is personal. If you haven’t cried in a voice lesson, you are in the minority, because it takes some vulnerable soul searching to find your voice.
Whether you are a performance major or a music education major or have chosen a more general course of study, the chances that you might teach music in some capacity are probably as high as your need to pay rent. Your teacher might not have started out teaching—many of the best teachers spend time perfecting their craft and then share that expertise between gigs or later in their careers.
Today’s teachers come into our educational journeys in different ways: full-time or part time-studio teachers, professional masterclass leaders, classroom teachers, conductors, and directors all effect countless students. Watching Joyce DiDonato’s masterclasses online can be as inspiring as listening to her sing.
Years ago I read a moving quote by the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger and I keep it on my desk to this day:
I am glad to learn in order that I may teach. Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it . . . the living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word
. . . because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns.
My own undergraduate voice teacher was a special man, Charlie Walton (1936–2014), who retired the year I graduated. I have always felt that I was the lucky recipient of his 36 years of university instruction, not to mention his specialization in Alexander Technique and tales of studying with famous names from a previous generation. “The Chief,” as we referred to him, fixed my passaggio in our very first lesson, and over the course of my music education degree, he instilled in me a love of vocal literature and allowed my natural voice to evolve with ease. I loved that man and, even as a freshman, I recognized the value of a teacher who brought out the unique qualities in each of his students. He encouraged (forced) us to go to the library to listen to records (as in the original, vinyl ones!). By engaging his students in weekly studio class discussions, I refined my ear and began honing an honest, yet positive way of communicating with fellow singers.
My high school voice teacher, my first mentor and lifelong friend Camille Blackburn, also studied with Mr. Walton. As often happens in this small world of music, she sent me to college to work with her teacher, assuring me that the most important factor of a music degree is a good voice teacher. Camille, a master teacher of thousands of high school choral and private students, shared this tribute: “Charlie Walton—teacher, mentor, and friend. Oh how I miss him. He was loving and supportive when I needed love and support and was firm and uncompromising when I needed discipline. I learned that we never learn until we are ready to learn. For when the disciple is ready, the master is ready also.”
I asked several singers if they would mind sharing tributes to their own college teachers. These singers have all studied classically and are now singing and teaching at all levels including the Metropolitan Opera, Broadway, university, church and professional choirs, and everything in between. The common themes of these tributes include care, trust, and expertise. You won’t find a great singer who isn’t grateful for their teacher.
Let’s Hear It for the Teachers
Tenor Robert Hoyt writes, “My college voice teacher, Dr. Scott McCoy, was invaluable in my development as an artist. He taught me to love learning—pedagogy, repertory, or terse languages. He was a true technician and a scientist of the voice, but it is in his gift of really getting down to the bones of pieces that I will always be thankful.”
Divine mezzo-soprano and yoga teacher Natalie Levin writes, “My beloved Julian Kwok was my voice teacher for years. He believed in me and helped me to understand how important it is to make a beautiful sound as well as pay attention to the words and drama. He is an amazing technician, and his words and teachings and brilliant genius still echo in my ears after many years.”
International tenor Eric Johnston says, “My first voice teacher, Dr. Robin Rice at the Ohio State University, did for me what many voice teachers fail to do for their students: he didn’t break me. How much more damage is done to young voices than good by well-intentioned teachers in the first few years of college? Thank you, Dr. Rice, for not trying to squeeze my voice into a place where it never could have fit. You recognized early that my instrument was different from those around me and let it develop and mature slowly. I am so very grateful for this. Over the last 20 years, I have made my living completely from singing and I continue to reach back to his foundational teaching today.”
Baroque specialist and sensational aerialist Marcy Richardson shares, “I’m lucky enough to have had three amazing voice teachers in undergrad and beyond. Patricia Wise, who always taught me a bright, vibrant, healthy sound. Mary Ann Hart, who brought out warmth and depth in my voice and always encouraged me to be a ‘gig slut’ and take work I love. She empowered me to believe I could have a classical singing career without necessarily going the traditional opera route. Both Patricia and Mary Ann remain friends and mentors to me to this day! And, finally, Trish McCaffrey, my teacher of over 10 years since college. She’s given me a lifelong vocal technique that I can rely on and never discourages my freak flag from flying!”
Metropolitan Opera National Council winner Lindsay Robison Killian had the extremely unique opportunity to study academically with her mother. “Vivien Robison was my first private voice teacher at Brigham Young University. She taught me, after over a year of strenuous mentally and heartily physically integrated vocal demolition, how to gently set the sound on the air. There, in the midst of her vested pains to help me figure out the gentleness of it, unveiled and came to being the magic moment when I felt for the first time the beauty of singing—where the ‘alive’ opened up into ‘beauty’ and found itself in everything that came.”
Music theatre diva Amy DeHaven writes, “My college voice teacher, Mary Catherine Dykhouse, was family to me. I babysat her kids and house sat for her. She was the best person I’ve ever met in my life. She saw in me what nobody did. She allowed me to belt so I wouldn’t hate being a soprano and feel like I would only be able to sing Rodgers and Hammerstein. We would laugh, and she would listen to me cry. She passed away in 2010, and I have never gotten over it. She truly changed my life like no other teacher had by caring about me.”
Professor and soprano Kristine Hurst-Wajszczuk shares, “I really think of myself as having two first teachers: Lise Messier, who nurtured me in high school and got me started. She often said the phrase, ‘Be gracious and strong.’ What a lovely, profound thought from a truly wonderful lady. My first college professor was the fabulous Lindsey Christiansen, who just last week told me, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ Those words meant more to me than she can imagine, since I can recall telling her once when I was about 19, ‘I want to be like you when I grow up.’ What an inspiration!”
Merola Opera alumnus and high school choral conductor Caryn Marlowe writes, “Kathleen Lane told me I had a golden throat in my first lesson. That compliment stuck with me, and she has always been a wonderful support in all my endeavors as a singer and teacher. Marjorie Bennett Stephens is nicknamed ‘Mother Soprano.’ When I landed in her studio in graduate school, I felt like I was in the very best possible hands. She helped me grow so much and introduced me to mountains of literature and competitions. I loved my time with her so much and will always think of her as a mother in the singing world!”
Marlowe’s 16-year-old student Emily Ann Roberts won second place in the 2015 season of The Voice. She shares, “I learned so much from my choir teacher, Mrs. Caryn Marlowe. She taught me how to trust myself and be confident. While singing in her choir, I was able to try new things and learn how much I was capable of accomplishing. I will remember her for the rest of my life.”
It is not always a voice teacher that shapes our careers. I asked noted conductor and composer Dwight Bigler to write a tribute to our mutual piano teacher, the woman who inspired me to be a musician with my initial tour of the vast depths of emotion just waiting to be discovered through music. Bigler words it beautifully, “As a young pianist growing up in rural Idaho, I was surprised and thrilled to hear that South African pianist Shulamit Hoffmann had moved to the area and was taking new students. She was the mentor I needed—committed, incredibly intelligent, inspiringly musical, demanding, patient, and disciplined.
“After finishing my bachelor’s in piano performance, I completed a master’s and doctorate in choral conducting,” Bigler continues. “Shulamit’s training has been an integral and essential part of my success as a conductor. After I finished my master’s, she went back to school and got her own master’s in choral conducting. And in May 2016, she graduated from Columbia University’s Teachers College with a doctorate in music education (see photo on p.12). She is a model mentor—continually improving her own skills while mentoring others. I will forever be grateful for her constant example!”
Although I asked my fellow singers to write about their first teachers, I cannot write a tribute to voice teachers without thanking my New York teacher, Josephine Mongiardo, who is the smartest woman I’ve ever met. She prepared me to enter the professional audition scene with her uncanny ability to hear my technical issues and help me line up the coordination I needed to balance the chiaroscuro throughout my registration changes. And her mastery of whistle tone opened my top and gave me the technique to organize my coloratura. She recognized my pedagogical potential and still takes time to talk me through issues I encounter with my own students.
Thank you, to all voice teachers! Thank you for your patience, love, your demands for excellence, and the mutual respect you offer your students. In closing—in memory of her beloved voice teacher, Charlie Walton, Jill Terhaar Lewis quotes his favorite composer, Kurt Weill (lyrics by Maxwell Anderson):
Oh, the days dwindle down
To a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you.
