I saw Belmont on your list, you should definitely visit there. My S is a senior composition major there and has many friends who are VP majors. Voice is the most competitive major in their music school, but the program is excellent. Belmont has an outstanding theater program and you don’t have to be a MT major to be in the shows. (It was the first college to perform the full Broadway version of Les Mis in 2013, it was fantastic) Also has good merit aid for top students and is pretty affordable compared to most colleges (tuition around $25k). One of my S’s high school classmates transferred there this year and I can’t even tell you how much her singing has improved.
Also check out U. of Kentucky, it has a strong voice program with outstanding faculty, and is inexpensive for out of state, with excellent merit scholarships. James Madison U. in Virginia might also be a good option. One of our high school’s top vocalists last year chose JMU over Boston Conservatory and other top schools.
I know you said you were not interested in East Coast schools, but you might want to look at Temple U. Good music school, solid voice program, and also affordable with good merit aid. University of the Arts in Philadelphia also has a great voice program (recent finalist on “The Voice,” Matt McAndrew, is a student there) but is expensive.
Thanks for the recent replies. We’re now past the search stage and my d is preparing for six upcoming auditions. They ended up being Belmont, Hartt, UNT, Texas Tech, Baldwin Wallace and Florida State (in order of audition date) ;). There’s WAY more to the story than that, but I hesitate to explain it all here.
My d is a freshmen vocal performance major at hartt who has an almost identical background to your d. She performed exclusively in mt (some professionally) until spring of her junior year and then decided to not major in mt. She studies classically…but over winter break performed in a staged reading of a tale of two cities. She currently studies with wayne rivera who she absolutely adores. He and the director are supportive of her singing classical and mt selections. She rooms with an mt freshmen whom she also adores (they have so much in common but aren’t competitors) and is friends with both the classical and the mt groups. For choir solo auditions she sang moonfall from mystery of edwin drood and it was very successful. Needless to say she loves hartt!
She will be one of the vp students at the auditions checking in and greeting prospective students. I’m sure she’d be more than happy to speak with your d when she auditions. If you’re interested pm me and I will give you her name and let her know about your daughter.
Ps…my d applied to @ 15 or 16 schools and auditioned at @ 10, one was video only… all north east coast (except cal baptist…her choir teacher made her).
On your list she applied to Oberlin hartt and bw. Oberlin was her first (they asked her to sing a triad and she sang it one note at a time…but then the monitor asked her to sing all three notes at the same time and she looked at him confused and said “I can’t do that”). Poor thing left the audition room in hives. Bw was her last and she had bronchitis for it. Hartt was during the big snow storms last year and was it’s own adventure. So glad she had more and so glad she had options to choose from.
@glassharmonica I thought that was a bit odd, too. How weird is this though. I hadn’t thought about multi-tonal singing until it was mentioned above and then, I say this in truth, my son’s high school choir performed with Willamette University’s choirs last night and the Willamette choir did a piece with multi-tonal singing!
@glassharmonica and @momsings…right? Apparently he was part of guitar faculty. All she could do was look at him perplexed and mutter…“uh no”. He looked annoyed and wrote something down. It completely freaked her out. Oh well…maybe next summer I’ll send her to study with the Mongolian monk throat singers and she will have that skill available for her masters.
He doubtless wanted her to sing the tones of the triad more quickly, not individually, but outlining the triad. If there were others there, they would have advised him about how he put it after she left the room. She should not worry about that exchange at all. I can guarantee, he did not expect her to sing a chord.
May be too late for this but given your location have you and d considered OCU? My d is freshman there in vp and mt and absolutely loves it. Lots of crossover allowed betwwen classical and my which your d might like.
@lorelei we figured as much afterwards. She was the first vocalist at the first regional audition and it was her first audition so it really threw her for a loop. Her pianist, also a professional vocalist, said that there were multiple phrasing issues. To quote her “he had a weird way of asking for things”. Either way this was last year and she is blissfully happy at the University she choose and has prospective students shadowing her during the audition season. It all works out in the end.
I know I’m jumping onto this late, but if it’s worth anything to you OCU (Oklahoma City University) has a respected program (alum Kristin Chenoweth and Kelli O’Hara) that will allow more of a middle road between Music Theatre and Classical. Vocal MT students train with classical students for the first two years, then split off, as far as I am aware. More info on their website, I think, also from people much more knowledgeable than I am.
While I respect that some here may have kids attending OCU, I caution against recommending any program based upon graduates who were there two decades ago (Chenoweth and O’Hara). The last I knew, there was some cross over in teaching faculty between the two programs, VP and MT, at OCU, and students were allowed to audition for both “sides” of the productions, but that is always subject to change as both programs have grown and things change. Can anyone post something more current with regard to this year’s productions?
My friend went there for her freshman year (she’s a california girl and couldn’t handle the Oklahoma state), and they still do cross over. Classical voice training is essential to growing the voice, even in music theatre, so they have vocal-emphasis MT students training with classical students for the first two years, so even if you choose music theatre there you don’t have to give up classical. I’m not saying it’s perfect, nor do I pretend to be an expert, but I think it’s a program worth looking at.
I know of a california girl who went there as well… she also left after one year. Maybe the same person? Nevertheless her father was a classically trained singer but she was more interested in mt. My understanding was that she was homesick. She’s going to school locally but is no longer a voice performance major. I’ve heard good things about the program, but have also heard the innuendos that they prefer the pageant sound/type. May be completely false, but that rumor along with the location took it off my ds list.
@Scubachick - I wanted to come back to this thread where my daughter’s journey to FSU started with your recommendation. She just made her decision today. Although the merit/talent scholarships came from every other school, none of the amounts made it within reach of the budget we had set up ahead of time for her. She qualified for a full OOS tuition waiver as well as merit and music scholarships. The out of pocket amount we will pay is very close to our budget. We both really liked the campus and got a good feeling after her visit for auditions. It was our last trip and I had no idea what to expect, but I really came away from there thinking it might be the right one. The music living-learning community was a big part of that since it made a huge school feel more approachable - even homey. I kept my thoughts about this to myself until she was down to the final week of decision-making, but only shared it with her to ease her mind about where we figured she would end up due to the financial reasons.
Just wanted to update / respond to the comments on OCU. My D is a freshman MT / VP double major there. She is getting very strong classical training and in fact may end up switching into VP though that’s not certain. ( Her teacher thinks she may be a coloratura and she thinks that’s fun☺ )… All the full time voice faculty teach both MT and VP students in their studios. Certainly there is a lot of classical technique taught and students are going into strong classical summer programs, recent grads performing in YAPs and cast in professional opera roles. They also have a lot of recent successful MT grads in touring productions, summer stock and Broadway.
All classical and MT students required to audition for all OCU produced operas and musicals and most take a role if offered. Not saying its perfect or anything but an update from " the place Kelli or Kristen went to."
That said – congrats to OP on her D’s choice of FSU! Beautiful school and very strong program☺
Although the merit/talent scholarships came from every other school, none of the amounts made it within reach of the budget we had set up ahead of time for her. She qualified for a full OOS tuition waiver as well as merit and music scholarships. The out of pocket amount we will pay is very close to our budget. We both really liked the campus and got a good feeling after her visit for auditions. It was our last trip and I had no idea what to expect, but I really came away from there thinking it might be the right one. The music living-learning community was a big part of that since it made a huge school feel more approachable - even homey. I kept my thoughts about this to myself until she was down to the final week of decision-making, but only shared it with her to ease her mind about where we figured she would end up due to the financial reasons.