Mary Ellen Callahan maintains a busy teaching practice in her Manhattan studio, offering private voice and sightsinging lessons to both professionals and amateurs. She also gives solo and ensemble coaching, music theory instruction, and French, German and English diction coaching.
General Teaching Style:
Mary Ellen Callahan has gained a reputation in New York as a very
flexible, patient, and nurturing teacher. She adores teaching and therefore
is very enthusiastic about helping people with their musical challenges. Her
use of fun, humor and honesty and her unassuming manner put students at their
ease. She helps people who thought they could never sing or read music to
overcome their limitations and join choruses and sing solos, and helps experienced
singers to set and reach new goals in fluency, quality and consistency.
Specifics:
Voice: M.E.C. has a natural, relaxed approach to proper vocal technique,
helping singers to release tension and to shape and hone their particular
voice for maximum beauty and individuality.
Sightsinging: Using the ability people have to sing a scale, M.E.C.
helps beginning singers or those lacking confidence to learn to sightread
tonally and intervalically. She also helps singers who have experience and
confidence to sing better in tune, and to incorporate music theory into their
singing, listening and ensemble work. In addition, she helps singers greatly improve their understanding, reading and execution of rhythms from simple to complicated, as well as helping them improve in the all-important skill of keeping a steady beat.
Solo and ensemble coaching
For both solo singers and small ensembles and choruses, M.E.C offers private coaching sessions. For soloists, she gives guidance on style and intonation, musicality, phrasing and diction, and dramatic interpretation and visual presentation to help a singer to be confidently prepared for a performance or audition. With small and large vocal ensembles, she works on blend, vowel sounds, rhythmic accuracy, intonation, phrasing and style to help the group achieve its best sound.
French, German, and English diction coaching
Having lived in France, M.E.C. is completely bilingual. She gives French diction coachings to singers and ensembles, using both intuitive (by ear) and technical (specifics on tongue and lip position) styles to best help each individual. She is equally comfortable teaching both German and English diction. In the Masters program at the Manhattan School of Music, M.E.C. truly learned all the intricacies and "gourmet" aspects to the pronunciation of both these languages and is adept at getting these across to the singer.
Music Theory
With her real love for the "mathematics" or building blocks of music, M.E.C. is a detailed, patient and enthusiastic teacher for music theory students. She has several favorite text books, and is also comfortable with a student's bringing his or her own text. She can greatly help the mystified beginner or the frustrated intermediate musician with general theory, modulations, and analysis.
Teaching History:
M.E.C. taught French classes in continuing education as well as private
French tutoring in California for four years before moving to New York and loved
every minute of it, and so did her students. In New York, she was employed for
two years as a sightsinging teacher to music majors at Wagner College. In 1995,
she opened her private studio, giving lessons of sightsinging, ear training,
music theory and vocal technique, as well as French diction and private and
ensemble song coaching. Since opening the studio, she has taught lessons to
many people of all ages, both amateur and professional, sometimes helping individuals
on a short term basis to get ready for specific choral or solo auditions, and
sometimes giving lessons over a period of years, helping students to improve
and maintain their overall musicianship and singing on an ongoing basis.