High School Voice Studio
A Year-long Classical Voice Development Program

The High School Voice Studio (Voice Studio) is a year-long classical voice-development program that targets inner-city, economically disadvantaged high school students of all ethnic-cultural backgrounds and diversities in the Houston’s inner-city. The Voice Studio prepares these students for professional careers in classical music, with the classical voice training making them better prepared for their intensive collegiate vocal curriculum.  These students are naturally talented; they are vocally gifted; they are passionate in their desire for voice lessons; and so, have deep desires for classical vocal training.

However, these students are from low-income families, from a one-parent family, or from foster families whose parent(s) cannot afford to pay for private voice lessons, which can be as much as $300.00 per month. At such a cost, these students are automatically denied the opportunity to receive this much needed classical vocal training at such an important stage of their vocal development.

The majority of Houston’s inner-city schools place emphasis and support for marching bands, concert bands, and string orchestra programs; however, there very few schools placing any emphasis on full classical vocal training and development programs like Singing From The Soul’s Vocal High School Voice Studio.  While Choral Programs do exist, they are not heavily supported at some of these schools.

The Voice Studio removes the financial burden, allowing these students to receive this much needed vocal training.



Selecting The Students
The Students Must Audition to Become Members of The Voice Studio

The students must audition for selection to our Voice Studio, and must receive a recommendation by their choir director prior to the audition. Each Student must be prepared to sing at least two songs that will demonstrate both vocal quality and range.  The student will participate in a 5-10 minute interview with Dr. Jason Oby, Miss Kathleen Knight and our vocal instructor to measure their level of interest and commitment to classical voice training, and their level of commitment to our year-long rigorous, disciplined voice program.


What The Students Receive
The Students Must Be Committed to Classical Voice Training

The students in our program must be committed to classical vocal training, must attend weekly vocal training, must plan to attend college and pursue music degree,  must complete all assignments given to them by their vocal instructor and must participate in monthly Master Classes. The students must participate two public recital: the first held in December and the second held at the end of the semester in May.  It is mandatory that the student fully participate in their high school’s choir.

Once selected, our vocal instructors will travel to the student’s school to give them free weekly voice lessons.  A time will be arranged with the school’s principal and choir director. The student will also attend monthly Master Classes which will cover selected topics and instruction in diction, and music theory; attend arts and music performances and receive instruction in the Kodaly Method of sight-singing and healthy vocal techniques.

These classes will also focus on musical expression and technique as a tool to enhance singing, and it will afford the opportunity to experience a variety of World Music traditions, vocal techniques, rhythms and performance settings.  Under our Distinguished Artist Lecture Series, we will invite music professionals to address our students, and speak on the facets of classical music and the foundations of good singing.

Another objective of Vocal Arts Studio is to provide as much exposure to the Arts available here in the Greater Houston Area. To achieve this objective, the students will be taken to musical performances at the Houston Grand, at the Hobby Center and at Jones Hall.