I have been a voice teacher for more than 50 years. My experience branches into all avenues of vocal and instrumental music. As a graduate of St. Olaf College and a member of the St. Olaf Choir I sang in most of the major concert halls in the US and northern Europe. With a degree in music education I taught vocal music in the High Schools in Wisconsin and Minnesota for 21 years and appeared with the Minnesota Opera as a guest artist in many productions under the direction of H. Wesley Balk. I was also the tenor soloist with Plymouth Music Series under the direction of Philip Brunelle in Minneapolis.
After earning a Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Colorado, Boulder, I began my university teaching in 1977 as Associate Director of Choral Studies and Voice Teacher at West Texas State University. In 1987 I was appointed Director of Opera Theatre and Professor of Voice at Northern Arizona University until my retirement in 2001. During that time I produced and directed 23 operas and musicals and conducted numerous musicals in conjunction with the NAU Department of Theatre.
I have studied voice with many fine teachers. Burton Coffin, Barbara Doscher, Roy Schuessler, Conrad Ozborne, Eduard Foreman and Kenneth Jennings stand out as being especially influential in my development. I also studied Choral Conducting with Olaf C. Christiansen and Paul Christiansen. As anactive member of The Vocalist, an email discussion group, I frequently write about technical voice matters on that site. Mywork with Burton Coffin and Barbara Doscher furthered my strong interest in the function of the voice based on scientific research. I recently attended workshops with Donald Miller, the developer of the VoceVista system for diagnosing vocal technique and vocal rehabilitation.
Although I am now retired, the study of singing and how we sing holds an ever present fascination for me. The knowledge we are now acquiring about the voice will produce not only more efficient singing but also a more accurate diagnosis of singer’s difficulties and through this a more direct and accurate method for improving performance. Voice teachers like to quote the old masters and seem secure that little new must be learned. It is a strange attitude when you realize that the old masters never embraced that same philosophy; they were always learning the new to add to the known. I hope this website can be of such a service to all of you, singers, teachers and the curious.