Michelle Rosen – President – Brooklyn, NY, USA
Elizabeth “Betsy” Fiedler – Vice-President – Leominster, MA, USA
Elizabeth “Betsy” Fiedler teaches music in her own private studio, and is the Director of Music at Holy Family of Nazareth Church. In addition, she is an adjunct faculty member at Mount Wachusett Community College, the Voice Consultant for the Arts Magnet at Burncoat High School, and is a soloist at local churches, colleges, and with the Greater Gardner Community Choir. Betsy enjoys performing on the stage at Theatre at the Mount and Greater Worcester Opera Company, and sings at local nursing homes. She has recorded three CDs of contemporary Christian Music. Her enthusiasm for music spills over into her teaching style and is evident in her performances. She has interest in many types of music from classical and sacred, to music theatre and jazz. Her love of learning has compelled her to seek out additional professional development and course work with the motivation of becoming the best teacher and singer possible. She holds a BS and MM in Music Education, and has completed coursework in Vocal Pedagogy. Betsy is certified in Levels I, II, and III of Somatic Voicework ™ the LoVetri Method, and is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, National Pastoral Musicians, and National Association for Music Education.
Benjamin Czarnota – Treasurer – Cleveland, OH, USA
Benjamin Czarnota is currently on the voice faculties of Ashland and Heidelberg Universities. Czarnota was the Coordinator of Musical Theatre Voice at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a voice faculty member at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music for over ten years. Students have performed leading roles on Broadway in the casts of American Psycho, Anastasia, Godspell, Hands on a Hard Body, Kinky Boots, Les Misérables, The Lightning Thief, ONCE. Private studio members range from a Tony award-winning singing actress to a speaking actor in a one-person play portraying dozens of uniquely voiced characters across the full spectrum of gender, age, and origin.
Czarnota originated the role of Mr. Webb in the world premiere of Ned Rorem’s operatic setting of the iconic Thornton Wilder play Our Town. Other notable roles include Stanley Kowalski in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Schaunard in La Bohème, and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro. Regional music theatre roles include the title role in Sweeney Todd, Marcus Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Freddy in My Fair Lady, the Father in Children of Eden and, most recently, Emile de Beque in South Pacific.
Billy Gollner is a singer, musician, voice teacher, and piano teacher currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Billy recently returned to Vancouver from London, UK where he was working as a singer and voice teacher.
Billy has been working full time as a voice and music teacher since 2012. In London, Billy had the honour of teaching singing at the Urdang Academy (a London-based Performing Arts University) in their Bachelor’s of Musical Theatre Program. The program is very intensive and competitive, providing students with the requisite skills for success in London’s highly competitive West End. In addition, Billy managed his private voice studio in Vancouver, Canada, and continued to teach students from all over the world online, from London to Australia, Singapore to Alaska, Brazil to Japan.
Billy holds a Master of Arts degree from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Musical Theatre Performance, a Bachelor of Music in Voice from Vancouver Community College, a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, Art, and Technology from Simon Fraser University, and a Certificate of Liberal Arts from Simon Fraser University. For his Bachelor of Music, Billy was honoured to be named the valedictorian of his graduating class. While attending Simon Fraser University, Billy received the Communications Alumni Endowment Award for excellence and creativity in writing; in addition, he was a member of the Golden Key Honour Society and on the Dean’s List.
Jeff Costello – Member-at-Large – Holland, MI, USA
Jeff Costello, BAA, M.Ed. As a vocalist, drummer, guitarist and sound engineer, Jeff has performed pop and rock music for thirty-five years (including three years in a Regional Touring Act) and has been a public school choir director for twenty-four years. He also directed a classical music church choir for ten years. In his school choirs he incorporates a great deal of Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) and utilizes sound/recording equipment daily in his classroom.
In 2018, Jeff presented How to Stage a Choir Rock Concert at the Association for Popular Music Education Conference in the Nashville area. In 2020, Jeff launched the Zeeland Academy of Music, a private and small group lessons studio in a retail space in downtown Zeeland, MI, where he has lived and taught nearly his entire life.
Maria Damore – Member-at-Large – Reading, PA, USA
Maria Damore is a private voice teacher from Reading, PA, and Board Member/Senior Faculty at the LoVetri Institute for Somatic Voicework™. “My journey with Somatic Voicework™ (SVW) began in 2011 while searching for ways to understand my own voice and the mid-life vocal problems I was experiencing. By attending the SVW levels, workshops, and Jeanie’s webinars repeatedly, I gained a deeper understanding of the complex nature of the human voice, trained my ears to listen for vocal function, and learned how to devise exercises to meet a student’s needs in the moment, all while recognizing the importance of body, mind, and spirit in the singing process. I slowly recalibrated my own voice for balance and ease, and now help others in their journey toward vocal freedom.”
Maria teaches students ages 10 through adult, both online and in-person, with a focus on musical theatre, pop, jazz, rock, and beginner classical styles. The 2022 recipient of the Frank Scott award for contributions to Berks County’s Jazz Heritage, Maria has been an educator for Olivet Boys & Girls Club, adjudicator for NATS, and clinician for GetJazzED – Berks Jazz Fest Vocal Day. She has been featured in Classical Singer magazine, discussing her work in the original children’s jazz-opera, The Bear Prince, and her Greek folk music duo Stavros & Maria. Known as a versatile singer who easily crosses genres, Maria competed as a quarterfinalist in the 2018 American Traditions Vocal Competition in Savannah, Georgia and has demonstrated her skills in crossing genres for the Voice Foundation workshop in 2024 led by Jeanie LoVetri. Maria has performed in various shows and operas, with bands, ensembles, and as a soloist for churches, orchestras, and social groups. Roles include Mother/Witch in Hansel and Gretel, Mercedes in Carmen, Faust chorus (Berks Opera Company), Micaela cover (Concert Opera of Philadelphia), Eva Peron in Evita, Lily in The Secret Garden, Grizabella in Cats, Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, and the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd. Be sure to listen to Maria’s jazz-flavored CD, “Moonglow,” and single, “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan. Maria holds a BA from Immaculata University, and an MSA from West Chester University, as well as graduate credit in Vocal Pedagogy from Shenandoah University. She is a member of NATS and PAVA and has studied with Toni Marie Palmertree, Tamara Black, Randi Marrazzo, John Nicholas Peters, and Jeanie LoVetri. For more information, visit www.mariadamore.com.
Dr. Trineice Robinson-Martin – Member-at-Large – Boston, MA, USA
Journal of Singing, and a member of the distinguished American Academy of Teachers of Singing.
Her career is marked by a commitment to both performing and developing innovative resources for vocal instruction. Her scholarly work includes the book “So You Want to Sing Gospel,” and numerous contributions to textbooks, peer-reviewed journals, and trade magazines. She is a
sought-after keynote speaker and master class instructor, having shared her knowledge at prestigious institutions globally.
As a performer, Dr. Trineice maintains a diverse schedule. She has been lauded by New York Music Daily as “an individualist who defies categorization: there’s the immediacy of classic soul music here, coupled with jazz sophistication, gospel rapture, and fervor.” Her debut album, “All Or Nothing,” showcases her dedication to Black American music and culture and features acclaimed artists such as Cyrus Chestnut and Don Braden.
Recently named Chair of the Ensemble Dept at Berklee College of Music, Dr. Trineice has been a faculty member at Princeton University for over a decade, where she taught private voice lessons, directed the Jazz Vocal Collective Ensemble, and lectured on African American music
and voice pedagogy. She also held an annual residency at Yale University’s Institute for Sacred Music, teaching in the Music in the Black Church Program.
Jeanie LoVetri – Founder – New York, NY, USA
Jeanie LoVetri is a recognized expert on Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) Vocal Pedagogy. She created this term in 2000 and the first college course for CCM in 2002, and has taught thousands of singing teachers worldwide since that time. She has been on five college faculties as a singing teacher and is the recipient of the Van Lawrence Fellowship bestowed by NATS and the Voice Foundation. She is author of 15 articles in both pedagogy and science in the Journal of Voice and the Journal of Singing. Trained as a classical soprano, LoVetri began performing leading roles in musical theater at age 17, and came to New York City in 1975 where she sang at Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center, Riverside Church, Marble Collegiate Church, at the Henry Street Settlement Theater, the late “Village Gate” in New York’s Greenwich Village and in classical and CCM repertoire up until 2020. LoVetri’s singing has been called versatile, unique and expressive by the New York Times. She encountered voice science in 1978 at Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice sponsored by the Voice Foundation where she is now on the Advisory Board. Her ground-breaking work has had a broad impact on the profession at large, leading the way to significant changes in pedagogy. She initiated multiple topics that have since become standard practice in teaching across the globe. Her students have appeared on and Off Broadway, at Carnegie Hall, at Lincoln Center and at concert halls, on TV, in film and theater and on recordings and at international venues all over the world but also locally in small churches, schools and auditoriums throughout the USA and internationally. Many of her professional students are Grammy and Tony winners and are recognized in a wide array of styles and are also teachers of singing. She has lectured or presented at many colleges and universities and at British Voice Association (BVA) Pan European Voice Conference (PEVOC), National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), Australian Association of Teachers of Singing (ANATS), as well as at Centro Estudo da Voz in Sao Paulo, and in hospitals and medical centers in the USA, Canada, South America, Australia and Europe and presented at the newly formed Israeli Association of Teacher of Voice in 2023. She is a reviewer for the Journal of Voice and the Australian Voice Journal. She shares from her 53 years of teaching and training all that she has learned in the hope that it will inspire others to grow and succeed at accomplishing their own singing goals.
She is the founder of the LoVetri Institute for Somatic Voicework™ at Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory in the Community Arts School and is now retired and acting as a Consultant for them. Somatic Voicework™ is a method of vocal pedagogy that has been taught at universities in the USA, Canada, South America and Australia.
Additional Faculty from Around the Globe
Beth Amin, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Tom Barton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Jason Burrow, Fayetteville, AR, USA
Moran Cohen-Talmor, Haifa, Israel
Liesl Mindeman Dromi, Siloam Springs, AR, USA
Jo Fitzgerald, Auckland, New Zealand
Rosanne Fraley, Frederick, MD, USA
Mary Gresock, Silver Spring, MD, USA
Alisa Hauser, Tallahassee, FL , USA
Lenora Helm Hammonds, Boston, MA & Durham, NC, USA
Oliver Henderson, New York, NY, USA
Adam Koopmans, Brampton, ON, Canada
Marty Lamain, Nashville, TN, USA
Jamie Leonhart, New York, NY, USA
Hilary Maiberger, Redlands, CA, USA
Jocelyn Medina, Boulder, CO, USA
Doug Peck, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Erin Puttee, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Ric Ryder, New York, NY, USA
Bharati Soman, Falls Church, VA, USA
Craig Tompkins, Burnaby BC, Canada
Angela Wiedemer, Stuttgart, Germany
Besfort Williams, London, England, UK
Kath Williams, Noosa, Sunshine Coast, Australia
Rachel Williams, Chicago, IL, USA