My teaching philosophy:
Singing
Singing is a natural human function. Everyone who can speak can sing.
I say this to people and they look at me with disbelief 99% of the time. They share a story about how there was someone they met somewhere who couldn't carry a tune. This is usually shared along with a memory about an elementary school or middle school choir teacher who told someone not to sing because they were "ruining" the sound of the whole group. As a voice teacher and performer, nothing breaks my heart as much as the limiting beliefs that come with these anecdotes. Just like we are not all going to be Olympic Athletes (as much as we'd like to), the average person can move their body to some degree. If you can walk, you can run to some degree. You may not be the gold medalist for the 400 meter sprint, but you can choose to run to keep yourself healthy and strong. The same goes for singing.
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In singing lessons with me, we will focus on building healthy breathing habits, increasing active listening skills and ear training skills, and developing your authentic voice. My goal as a teacher is to use my knowledge and skills to further your goals, whether they are to sing professionally or to sing karaoke with confidence.
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Lessons are 45 minutes and include warm up exercises and work on repertoire. Please contact me via the form below for more information.
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Testimonials
"Maria has worked with our daughter to prepare her for performing arts high school auditions for New York City. For those unfamiliar with this process, the multiple well regarded performing arts high schools select potential students based on the quality of their audition in their respective discipline. It is very competitive and stressful and can be difficult even for kids with genuine talent, especially for the most sought after programs. Our daughter was interested in singing, musical theatre, and acting, and did a lot of preparation for each of her submissions. Ultimately, she got an offer from her first choice and one of the most competitive programs, vocal music at LaGuardia High School.
Needless to say, we attribute much of our daughter's success in this program to Maria's expertise and talent for teaching children. Maria is kind and passionate about the performing arts. She believed in our daughter’s ability, established a strong and supportive relationship with her and built up her confidence in her own talent with patience and positivity. Maria supported our daughter through the entire process of admissions from vocal and acting exercises to strengthen core skills, she helped her choose the songs and monologues for the auditions so as to showcase her talents while also matching her personality and reflecting her heritage.
All in all, Maria is a highly skilled and gifted teacher (with a wonderful voice, my goodness!). She is well organized and structures lessons so that they are both productive and fun and engaging for her students. She provides very detailed feedback that highlights both strengths and development areas but also all the progress that is being made, often by comparison of recordings over time that showed her, rather than explained it to her. In addition, Maria was very easy to deal with as a parent, as she was consistently punctual and went above and beyond when it came to compromising her scheduling demands to accommodate our own. And of course, she was very helpful in guiding us regarding our daughter’s progress, suggesting activities to support her outside of lessons, and helping us advise our daughter on her next best steps.
Our daughter plans to continue working with Maria as she navigates her performing arts goals in high school next year. We highly recommend Maria without hesitation, especially for children with similarly lofty goals. She is truly gifted."
- Maola H., mother of student accepted into LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in NYC.