Voice
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Jerome Kyles, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"God-given gifts are wonderful, but without the drive to get better, it will just be that—a great talent sitting on the shelf. I see, in every student that I have right now, the ability to achieve. So if I see a student underachieving, then that student is going to get the hammer. But I believe students come to Berklee because they want the hard stuff—they want to be challenged."
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Bradford Gleim, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I'm a great advocate of technology in the classroom. All of my students record their lessons using their laptops, and we use those videos as learning tools outside of our lesson time. Then, also, I have students make a video on their own every week and send it to me, and sometimes I'll also Skype, because I believe that one of the pitfalls of private instruction is that we only see each other once a week. In those seven days in between, a lot of things could happen to change habits."
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Livingston Taylor, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Above all else, performers need to be what I call 'ferociously curious.' Secondly, they need to watch their creativity land: to watch it arrive. It's not enough to just create and throw it out there. You have to watch it land. When you do things that people like, do those things again. When you do things that they don't like, don't do 'em any more. This is not rocket science here."
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Rene Pfister, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I'm big on repertoire. The song is the medium through which singers express their talent. I encourage my students to listen to vocalists of all genres, analyze what is happening vocally, both technically and stylistically. It's critical that a singer learn to choose the right songs. All of my students create a book of songs in the proper keys so that they are prepared when someone says, 'Can you do this gig?' Yes, and I'm ready to sing 50 songs to prove it."
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Kathleen Flynn, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Technique is being able to sing freely and with ease, so that your body can really obey your artistic ideas. What goes into that is a lot of study, a lot of rigorous and occasionally tedious repetition of exercises, so they become muscle memory, so that when you're in a performance, you're not thinking, Is my jaw tight? Is my tongue loose enough? Are my ribs expanded? You're only thinking about communicating with your audience."
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Marcelle Gauvin, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department- Head of the Jazz Voice studio at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
- Teaches at Shenandoah University’s Contemporary Commercial Music Institute
- Graduate-level certification in Somatic Voicework
- Recordings include Faces of Love and The Edge of the Pond
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Jeremy Ragsdale, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Berklee is a place where you can truly find your unique vocal sound, in whatever style you want. Where most voice programs require their students to study voice with one private teacher for their entire undergraduate career, Berklee has adopted the "it takes a village" approach to educating our voice students. Students are encouraged to jump around from one teacher to another. When I was a student at Berklee, I loved that approach. I gained amazing insight into vocal technique, improvisation, how to overcome stage fright, how to conduct myself onstage, how to interact with a band, how to write music for several different performance situations, and much more."
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Carrie Cheron, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department- B.M., Voice, Indiana University
- M.M., New England Conservatory
- Recordings include One More Autumn
- Performances with Edie Carey, Anais Mitchell, the Barra MacNeils, Northern Lights, David Jacobs-Strain, Liz Longley, Miss Tess, and Trina Hamlin
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Allison Beaudry, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Sometimes ideas can come at the most random times. For me, it's mostly when I'm lying in bed at night or driving in the car. I'll either stay up in the dark singing through the melody line I have created until I get it right, or I'll find the sound recorder on my cell phone and recite the lyrics that pop in my head in between shifting gears in my car. Bizarre, yes, but when something inspires you, you have to grab hold of it, because you never know, it could be your next hit."
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Aubrey Johnson, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Berklee is an awesome place to study voice, because they want to nurture you—who you are, what you love. They make sure that you have a great musical foundation, as well. They teach you how to be a singer, but also how to read music and direct a band and write a chart and write your own music with intricate harmonies. They take popular music and they make it what classical and jazz have been at conservatories for years."
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