I am first and foremost a singer. My parents met while in the Stanford band and my mother was a professional musician, so singing was always a part of my life. In fact, my entire family are all musicians, so the house that I grew up in often sounded like a music conservatory with my mother teaching piano, my brother practicing his guitar or flute, and my sisters singing or playing the trombone or piano. Me, I just sang.

My own singing took many forms. I did a ton of shows as a teenager and young adult. Then after I decided I'd done every "zany side-kick" role there was, I decided to try my hand at cabaret. At that time clubs were still fairly plentiful, and I had a few good years of "saloon singing" before that venue dried up.

By this time I had started working days at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre, teaching classes and directing shows. It was here that I began also teaching private voice lessons. Whereas I loved - and still love - working with groups of people, the pleasure of the one-on-one discovery that comes with private teaching was addictive. As the years went by, I took more and more students in the days while I rehearsed, directed and performed in the evenings. I had found my niche!

My teaching is based on the Bel Canto method. I specialize in singing for Musical Theatre, but I also work with students on other contemporary styles of music including pop, country, rock, R&B and even some Bluegrass and Hip Hop. In all musical styles, emphasis is placed on proper vocal technique - including breathing, placement and articulation - as well as on dramatic interpretation and presentation.

I have had great success working with students with difficult breaks in their voices so I consider this another area of expertise. I am a big believer in healthy singing, especially where the "Broadway belt" is concerned. I believe a singer should learn to use their entire range; the chest, mix, and head voices. For example, whether or not someone ever intends to sing in a high "legit" voice, learning to do so will give them strength and control in the rest of their range.

Mostly, I'm a believer in freeing the voice. 99% of the vocal problems people have come from tension; often tension the student is doing themselves in an attempt to make themselves sound better. Trust me, you will sound better if you stop listening to yourself and "fixing" what you hear and just sing out in a free sort of way.

Another area in which I feel I have become expert is working with people who have pitch problems or are "tone deaf." People contact me all the time saying they want to be able to sing "Happy Birthday" or Christmas Carols without having people look at them in shock. Or they simply want to be able to sing lullabies to their kids. In years of working with people like this, I have found techniques that work to help improve, and sometimes completely correct, their pitch issues.

As I stated earlier, whereas the rest of my family all played multiple instruments, I just sang. When I first started teaching I would accompany my students on the piano, but after about 10 years, I realized I was more distracting than helpful. At that point I decided that my students would get more out of the lessons if I was able to completely focus on their singing and not on my (bad) playing. I now work with recorded accompaniment, and that is MUCH better! These days there are tons of options for recorded piano and karaoke accompaniments.