Re: Voice Teachers--what to look for?

angstridden
Sat, 15 Oct 2005 16:07:21 +0000

Lorilei (sp)

In daughters case it was a vocal competition. All who wanted were allowed to participate (whether or not they were a student) and the winners (two were selected )were given free lessons for a year. D. did not do anything for this teacher other than participate in a few little things which were for Her (D’s) benefit. Winners were chosen based on a vocal competition where they sang and the prize was awarded by whom the studio felt was the best singer. When my D. was with her studio she was asked if she would like to do say singing at the mall or a play etc…but there was never any pressure. And in D’s case she did just a couple small things - she sang a few solos at the mall, did a recital and that was about it. Good experience for D. and certainly very normal for any music student. There was certainly no commission for gigs (not sure what you meant here btw) or exploitation. It was a competition and the studio awarded the lessons as the top prize.

At the time D. tried out she felt she had outgrown her other teacher whom she had taken lessons from since she was 5. She took two years in a row from the place where she won the free lesson (she won her lessons free for two years) and we thought she was an excellent teacher but she got sick alot and was very busy so there were numerous misses, thus we did not feel the progress being made was as good as it could be.

So the next year she switched teachers. The new teacher has been awarding scholarships for years (almost all of the teachers around here award some types of scholarships based on practice, voice etc).
Anyway at the end of her first year the teacher selected the winners and D. was one of them.

This was wonderful for us as we planned to stay with her anyway.

There are also scholarships around here based on monetary need and they are with our local community foundation…But D. has never participated in those. In addition there are scholarships sponsored by public service groups like Rotary etc. D. has won two of these and was awarded a scholarship to use towards college in both.