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EXPERIENCED WARM NURTURING PROFESSIONAL EXCITING DYNAMIC FUN REWARDING PRACTICAL |
Carol Ann Manzi, internationally acclaimed operatic soprano, currently maintains a thriving voice studio in Santa Barbara, CA, where she is in high demand as a vocal coach. In the summer of 2018, she was invited to join the esteemed voice faculty at the Music Academy International in Trentino, Italy. In the fall of 2017, she resumed teaching for Santa Barbara City College, as an anchor for its Vitality Program.
She has served on the faculty of Northern Arizona University as a sabbatical replacement for Dr. Judith Cloud, Coordinator of Voice, for the winter/spring term (through May 2013). And in the fall of 2013, she accepted a three-year appointment as the Artist-in-Residence at the Salem Catholic Schools Foundation in Oregon.
During her tenure as Artist in Residence, Miss Manzi developed the INSPIRE ENSEMBLE, a select group of serious performing arts students whom she groomed for outreach performances, intensive study and workshops, a full scale opera and a concert tour of Austria and the Czech Republic. Their concert in Nova Rise, the Czech Republic, was broadcast on National Czech television.
Serious students of all ages are taking advantage of Manzi’s vocal and performance expertise. Her private studio provides a warm and nurturing environment where her students find the necessary freedom required for vocal development and self expression. Her teaching exemplifies the best traditions of vocal pedagogy. She is available for distance-coaching and -consultation via Skype and other means of communication.
Ms. Manzi’s innate knack for teaching was recognized early. When still an undergraduate student at Southern Connecticut State University, where she majored in foreign languages and minored in the Theatre Arts, she was invited to give classes to the entire music department on the use of the voice and opera. Soon thereafter, as a graduate student at Yale University’s prestigious School of Music, Ms. Manzi taught voice to undergraduates.
As a young professional, in recognition of her vocal resilience and success in dealing with health issues for singers, she was invited to speak to Yale’s Voice Department on best practices in the care of the voice. This hard-earned honor followed many bouts of illness and subsequent treatments, during which she learned first-hand about the importance of the care and preservation of the singer’s instrument. She trained with top vocal therapists in the expert use of and care for both the singing and speaking voice.
Ms. Manzi served as Artist/Instructor for five years at The Greater Hartford Academy for the Performing Arts in Connecticut, where she taught classes in opera, singing, and voice for actors. Many of her students have gone on to earn coveted spots in the country’s most prestigius music and dramatic training programs and have won top prizes in scholarship competitions.
For over twenty years she taught privately in Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, and California. She especially excels as a coach for younger pupils preparing for major auditions, having given numerous master classes on audition techniques, performance deportment and correct repertoire choices. She has worked with some of the finest teachers, coaches, directors and agents in the world. Her own master voice teachers have included Rita Patané (Italy), Arthur Levy (New York City) and Doris Cross (Yale).
After five highly successful seasons at the Sarasota Opera as a principal main stage artist, the company invited Manzi to spend a season as director of its Youth Opera Program. For Connecticut Opera she toured as part of “Opera Express,” bringing opera into schools and other venues on the East Coast. For Opera Santa Barbara, she has taught for several seasons in their “Opera in the Schools” program, bringing the joys of the human voice and opera to sixth-graders.
Ms. Manzi presented a master class entitled “The Color of Sound and Movement” for the Future Traditions Foundation in Santa Barbara, and was appointed to the roster of Big Thought – Dallas’s offshoot of the popular New York City based Young Audiences. For Big Thought, she made presentations to students in the greater Dallas area on the concept of “the color of sound.”
Ms. Manzi holds a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. To her teaching, she brings a gentle but firm approach. It is her goal to deepen students’ appreciation of the sheer joys of music, to enable them to feel confident in the use of their voices, to bring out their own special and unique vocal and interpretive skills, and to stretch them to exceed their goals.