Comments from some of our 2009 program participants.
The faculties were all-outstanding in their disciplines and attained fast and real improvements in all of the singers I heard throughout the program. Uncle Frankie was wonderful.
Neil Rosenshein (The faculty) offered a lot of great feedback and was a pleasure to work with. Maitland was phenomenal
and I appreciated all of his hard work. Shane is a perfect coach. Overall - it was an AMAZING experience and I learned more in a month than I did in 4 years of undergrad. :)
Margaret Peterson ( my acting teacher was an awesome and inspiring teacher. I learned a ton from her acting classes. Keep hiring her!
Thank you for this opportunity. It has certainly opened a lot of doors to me. I doubt I would be any where near as competent in my field with out it.
Uncle Frankie made me feel comfortable when he announced that if any student were to laugh at another, he would ask them to leave. This showed me that he has respect for students of all levels of dance knowledge. His sense of humor was delightful.
Maitland Peters was a very energetic person. I admired his style in teaching the Master Class. He also seemed to be very kind in his interactions with me personally. I believe he genuinely cares about young singers.
Patenaude-Yarnell has that wonderful "old-school" thinking when it comes to singing beautifully and I feel she is a genius when it comes to Italian diction and style.
I admired my acting teacher Rhoda. She never assumes anything about anyone. She asks questions and seems to be learning as she teaches. Perhaps that is why I liked her so much.
The English diction class was interesting. I already knew IPA but I still learned a lot. I thought that American and British were the only kinds of pronunciation (American having different regional accents, of course) but never heard of Mid-Atlantic used for broadcasting and such. Very interesting, indeed!
Each teacher spent a lot of individual time with one singer.
It was great seeing a voice teacher and coach twice a week. Sam Gelber did a very good job organizing the summer workshop considering the mammoth task it was.
I feel like I am one of the few people who actually took advantage of all the opportunities in the city to go to the theater regularly. This may be because I knew how to get student rush tickets, info about doing the lottery, and standing room tickets which allowed me to see 9 different productions for under 300 dollars
Of course the lessons and coachings helped me the most, but I really enjoyed the acting class and dance.
I feel privileged to have participated in the first year of this program and hope that it has continued success.
I LOVED the program.
In my opinion, all the classes value was very high.
I very much enjoyed working with all staff especially Carolyne Marlow, Maitland Peters, and Cynthia Hoffman. One thing I really enjoyed was that the program wasn't about learning a role, it was about the voice as a whole. I think that if the program was about learning an opera role, I wouldn't have grown as much vocally.
I worked with Cynthia Hoffman and she was absolutely phenomenal, the most effective teacher I have ever experienced, therefore the program was of invaluable quality. The program as a whole was wonderful due to the quality of the faculty, which is why I came to the program. Donna Vaughn, Chris Cano, and Kathryn Labouff I thought were exceptional assets to my learning.
I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the program and learned so incredibly much, and I now really want to attend MSM! You guys did an amazing job organizing this program, congratulations!
After just 3 weeks, my voice felt like it had grown more than it had in 3 years! The confidence and knowledge instilled in the students through this program is incredible!
Besides organizational things i truly believe that this program went very well and i grew so much as a singer it was unbelievable.
I believe, at least from everyone I have spoken with, we all learned a lot and enjoyed ourselves. This program will be one of the best if not for the teachers alone.
It was a wonderful experience and I am so glad that I was able to partake in the opportunity! Great Job Sam!
I loved Uncle Frankie!! He was so informative and helped me so much. He was fun to be around and worked so well with the students. If I came back, I would want him to be there!! Margaret Peterson was one of the most influential people I have met. Everyone who had her felt so strongly about her. She made everyone comfortable to express him or herself and opened everyone's eyes to new ideas about music and acting. Joan Patenaude-Yarnell was a joy to watch and to work with. Her class/master classes were influential and informative. I have never learned so much about the Italian style as I did in this one month!! Thank you for a wonderful experience. It was everything that I was hoping it would be, especially for the first year!!
The Acting Studio with Margaret Peterson was amazing. She was very practical about the material, going to the specifics of each person and helping us individually and as a group, I would definitely include her class again, and hope that more people can benefit from her knowledge and experience. In general I enjoyed the program very much, and I feel like I benefited immensely from it; I felt myself improve a little every day. I do wish there had been more time to go to all the classes; the electives were not always possible for me, and I thought that one hour a week was not enough time to give everyone the possibility of working with the teachers.
Donna Vaughn had a great deal of amazing things to say. Uncle Frankie was wonderful. Neil offered a lot of great feedback and was a pleasure to work with. Maitland was phenomenal and I appreciated all of his hard work. Overall - it was an AMAZING experience and I learned more in a month than I did in 4 years of undergrad.
More Information about this exciting summer experience will follow soon.
Use the email address below to add your name to our mailing list so we can send you updated details and application information. summervoice@msmnyc.edu
