As an inspiring master teacher in the USA, as well as in Vienna and other European cities, Elem employs his rare ability to help students of various levels and ages. He offers insights, techniques, and ideas that inspire progress in both the near- and long-term. His goal is to share knowledge and process, empowering singers to integrate needed techniques into practice and performance, via the imagination. His current and former students sing in opera houses and concert halls around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, leading regional companies, and prominent concert halls.

Elem accepts a limited number of private students in his Princeton-area studio and/or online (Zoom). He is available for master classes, consultations, and individual instruction at interested music schools or departments, an effective teacher for students of various ages, backgrounds, voice characteristics, abilities, and goals.

“I am gifted with a lifelong love of singing and a deep love for teaching. For thirty-four years at Westminster Choir College, I served on an unparalleled voice faculty, largely agreeing on just what constitutes good singing and good teaching, offering opinions to each other generously. Those significant years with prized colleagues coincided with a decades-long career singing opera and concert, under New York artist management. Throughout my forty-year career (full-time teaching at the college level), I have worked diligently to grow as an artist - both as a performer and in the teaching studio - and am deeply grateful for all the successes in both areas. I find the pursuit of both streams to be complementary and mutually supportive, although strategic management and thoughtful balance are essential.

Specifically, I believe my strongest abilities and goals are to:

• Establish rapport with a broad range of personalities, through strong communication skills,

• Ascertain essential abilities and needs presented by a student, with the knowledge and experience to offer on-point technical instruction for short- and long-term growth, seeking better coordination of breath management with tonal goals,

• Guide students towards efficient and effective use of their bodies and athletic sense to sing with optimal strength and expressive freedom,

• Share my inherent musicality, strong musicianship, aesthetic sense, and learned stylistic choices (including well-honed language skills, particularly in English and German) to help students be at home with a broad range of repertoire. My background as pianist and conductor also helps me to bring pianist and singer more closely together as a performing ensemble.

Doctoral study at Indiana University School of Music (completed all coursework for the degree D.Mus. in voice performance and literature) gave me abundant opportunity to learn and grow as a singer; I was cast in no less than five roles of the IU Opera Theater during my three semesters and two summers of study in Bloomington. In addition, the focus on voice literature allowed me to broaden the pedagogical training that I received in my undergraduate years at Baylor University, where my excellent voice teachers were Daniel Pratt and Carol Blaickner-Mayo. During my work towards the MM in voice at Southwestern Baptist Seminary School of Church Music, I studied voice pedagogy with James C. McKinney, whose book The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults still appears on voice pedagogy bibliographies. Further, I was a soloist and the pianist for his highly-regarded Men’s Chorus at that time. During the years that I was Assistant Professor of Voice at Southwestern, I taught McKinney’s basic Voice Pedagogy course for one semester in his absence.

My teacher at Indiana University was the esteemed Margaret Harshaw, known as a strong technical teacher. In fact, my study with her continued periodically until her passing in 1997. Not only the lineage of Miss Harshaw back to Garcia, but a shared link from my valued teacher and mentor, Jack Coldiron (my voice teacher at Southwestern Seminary), extends back through Mack Harrell to Garcia. Harrell and Harshaw were studio-mates when they were taught by Anna Schoen-Renée, who had herself studied with Pauline Viardot-Garcia.

Of immense influence on me were my lengthy residences in Vienna. After two summers of study there, I took a semester leave in spring 2011 and lived, studied, and performed in Vienna for six months. That time inspired me to re-create for others my own experiences in the City of Music, so I launched and administered the summer program, Vienna: Language of Lieder, which ran from 2012 through 2019, before the pandemic forced us to shut down our boutique program. It is those times of learning from, coaching with, teaching with, and getting to know wonderful colleagues - among them Norman Shetler, Walter Moore, Robert Holl, Carolyn Hague, Michael Pinkerton, Deirdre Brenner, Sholto Kynoch, Wolfgang Holzmair, and others - that brought my love for and abilities with the German repertoire into sharper focus.”

Visit kavbar.com  for more information on Elem’s viewpoints and methods as a teacher.

Elem’s academic CV is available by request to eekavbar@gmail.com.