Voice Teacher and Coach
I
have wanted to be an educator since before I could remember. I was taught from a young age that
knowledge is the only thing that people cannot take from you, and that if one has access to knowledge while others do not, then it is their job to spread that knowledge to them. This is why I teach. This is why I sing. This is one of the best ways I know how to love and support my community.
I started making lesson plans and educating my peers on teen dating
violence and environmental, racial, migrant, and financial injustices from the age of thirteen and went on to teach my first classroom at the age of fifteen. I started singing when I was a baby, my first word was even from a commercial jingle of Beethoven's fifth! I was raised in a house where we listened to everything such as Gangsta Rap, House, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Trance, Country, R&B, Pop, Reggeaton, Musical Theater, Cumbia, Bollywood, Chinese Opera, and Merengue, just to name a few. I am so grateful to my parents for having exposed me to musical genres from around the world because all of these genres have helped shaped me into the artist and educator that I am today.
I had the amazing opportunity to attend Oberlin College and Conservatory for four years on a full-tuition scholarship which was a total wakeup call for me because I was now being surrounded by wealthy white people who had often held classical music on elitist and racist pedestals and were often referring to opera as being the best art form out there. I had to learn everything from scratch: keyboard skills, reading "western" notation, white music history, etc. and I did well in all of these classes because I was determined to graduate, get my masters, and eventually be in a place of power. I have had so many horrible experiences with racist and transphobic professors, coaches, and private voice teachers. I told myself that when I had the chance, I would create a studio of my own in which I could teach people from my community and communities like mine for practically no money because I just wanted people to have access to really awesome music, a natural stress reliever, and to help them build their confidence.
"I like to think of my students as mini Bob Rosses who are through these lessons, acquiring paints, brushes, colored pencils, markers, etc. so that they have options now: they don't have to keep using the same brush over and over again to make amazing masterpieces on their own."
I teach students from many different backgrounds and try to create an environment that is inclusive, supportive, loving, challenging, and enlightening. Our lessons go beyond what many people think of when it comes to singing. We focus on having better posture, breathing, using our speaking voices in a healthy way, ear training, music theory, diction, basic anatomy, even how much water we should be taking in and at what times. I like to think of my students as mini Bob Rosses who are through these lessons, acquiring paints, brushes, colored pencils, markers, etc. so that they have options, they don't have to keep using the same brush over and over again to make amazing masterpieces on their own. I am always looking for the "easiest", resonant, flexible, and even sound that I can get out of people while also giving them the freedom to dial those things back if they want to for certain styles later on.
I am a cross-training teacher in every sense of the phrase. We learn how to sing in any genre because the technique I teach is not about aesthetics but anatomy, joy, and ease. My students have come in wanting to learn and improve their skills in classical bel canto, standard musical theatre, pop, R&B, soul, Gaelic traditional songs, flamenco, Chinese ballads, and the list goes on. I start wherever they need to and want to make sure that this feels like a partnership, not just me talking down to them. We set goals together, celebrate them when we reach them, and look back at the ones we did not meet to see how we can shift them to work for us now. I make sure to have a student-based approach to teaching because I recognize that people prefer certain learning styles over others and because the human voice is more unique than our
fingerprints so how unfair is it for us to force our students into boxes that should have never existed in the first place?
"Singing is not only really empowering, fun, and impressive, but it is also a stress reliever because it triggers your parasympathetic nervous system and who doesn't need that while living in a pandemic?"
COVID has led me to continuing to meet with my students over zoom and cleanfeed. These are both programs that are free to use, I just send you a link to my account. A quick reminder: my lessons are being offered on a sliding scale and I have been trying to keep in mind the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic when I think about peoples financial situations. If money is keeping you from giving me a call or an email, please contact me anyway because I am sure that we can come to an agreement!
I am always ready to take new students because teaching does not feel like work to me, it feels like love and building community. If you like what you have read and listened to on this site so far, I really encourage you to reach out because I would love to meet you and because singing is not only really empowering, fun, and impressive, but it is also a stress reliever because it triggers your parasympathetic nervous system and who doesn't need that in 2023?