Words from the Artistic Director

Teaching Philosophy

My goal, or, my duty as a teacher is to equip my students with tools to be able to serve the music, bring the composers thoughts and wishes to life, and to express themselves.

The building of an instrument is an important task. Voices are like people, they come in all shapes and sizes, it can never be “one size fits all”. That is the beauty and the challenge of teaching voice. It is essential to understand that a voice, as with all other instruments, must be built. When the building process is done, then we have to learn to ‘play’ it.

— Catherine Mazzone

INSPIRATIONS

“Our vocal art is a marvel just as our instrument is one, and a beautiful human voice which is so blessed as to be able to give forth that which stirs our hearts is an incomparable, glorious marvel. We singers are in duty bound to become closely acquainted with this instrument in order to serve humanity with an ideal art.”

“Our body is simultaneously the instrument and the resonance box upon which we have to learn to play. Our muscles are the strings which we have to learn to tune, tighten and loosen, one to the other, and our soul is the director of our art.”

— Lilli Lehmann (1848-1929, founder of Mozarteum International Summer Academy and Artistic Director at Salzburg Festival)

“Listen and learn, but trust yourself, for you must go your path and not anothers.”
— William Earl Brown (1870-1945, teaching assistant of Giovanni Battista Lamperti)