Teaching, Workshops, and Healing Through Music

Photo by Michael Gold "Woerner is enthusiastic, encouraging, exuberant...Her suggestions were always relevant." — Kathy Norklun, Woodstock Times

Danielle is respected as a master voice teacher within Manhattan voice-teaching and acting circles as well as throughout the mid-Hudson Valley, and for good reason. She has forged a powerful, effective method for helping students develop, out of the combination of her broad experience of musical repertoire in performance, technical expertise, pedagogical skills—plus her natural enthusiasm, humor and empathy. As a member of NYSTA (the New York Singing Teachers’ Association in NYC), she stays on top of recent developments in her field, keeps in touch with colleagues, and constantly augments her knowledge and skills. She has taken NYSTA's Professional Development program in Voice Anatomy and Physiology, Acoustics, Pedagogy, Repertoire (Classical and Musical Theater) and Vocal Health, with experts in each of these fields. Danielle not only sings an amazing variety of music—classical and operatic, musical theater, jazz and other improvisational forms, pop, folk and world music—she has delved into the performance practice of many types of singing, from Baroque to the present day.

In 1993, she founded her voice studio in the mid-Hudson Valley, which she calls Woodlark Studio. Its mission is holistic as well as professional: to provide expert teaching to people who want to improve their voices, whether they’re beginners or professionals, and also to include the healing component of music.

When we sing, our bodies are our instruments. Whatever tension or fear we hold in our bodies and our energy fields directly affects the singing. Relaxation and physical awareness help to address voice and confidence issues in a supportive, non-judgmental atmosphere, while solid technical knowledge is brought to bear on solving vocal problems. As our own barriers to singing in our free, essential voices dissolve, we not only take more enjoyment in singing and progress toward our goals; we also become “instruments of peace” through the quality of vibration that we now put out into the world when we sing.

“Thank you for all you have done for me over the past five years, to help me become the singer I am now, and to get to this point.” — From a high school graduate upon her admission to a highly competitive collegiate vocal program

In addition to maintaining private studios in the mid-Hudson Valley and Manhattan, Danielle has taught voice at several colleges. Currently a Guest Instructor at Vassar College’s Drama Department, she teaches private voice lessons there, and helped with the musical preparation for the groundbreaking 2006 department production, Treaty, created by Kathy Wildberger. As a Music Faculty member at Dutchess Community College, she teaches a workshop course called “Finding Your Voice.” Danielle was the fall 2000 Artist in Residence at SUNY Ulster in Stone Ridge, NY, and has been a faculty-adjunct at Bard and Hunter Colleges. Her students have performed leading roles in professional summer stock companies around the country, sung cabaret shows in Manhattan clubs like Danny’s Skylight Room, the Duplex and Don’t Tell Mama, and recorded professionally.

Danielle has led singing workshops at retreats including the Omega Institute (Rhinebeck, NY), the Discovery Institute and Esoterica (New Paltz, NY), and has given workshops and lecture-demonstrations at such schools as The Academy (New Paltz, NY), Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), Bates College (Lewiston, ME), Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), Poughkeepsie Day School (Poughkeepsie, NY), Russell Sage College (Troy, NY), and SUNY Ulster (Stone Ridge, NY). She has presented to professional organizations such as the American Guild of Organists, the Joy in Singing series at Lincoln Center, and the Network for Expressive Arts in Therapy (NEXTh), and has coached conductors in rehearsal with their choirs at numerous colleges and churches.

She has been a member of NEXTh, and for four years did music and activity therapy with Mental Health Services at Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, NY. Danielle is a sought-after presenter at national and regional conferences on the arts in mental health, given by organizations including NAMH (National Artists for Mental Health) and NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill).

Photo by Michael Gold "Woodstock diva Danielle Woerner sings the soulful waitress Rosabella -- lyric as Deanna Durbin as she melds in duos to an intimate tenderness that kindles the show past "professional" to the realer-than-life center that is its potential heart." — Daily Freeman, Kingston, NY (in Frank Loesser's Most Happy Fella)

Danielle is passionate about the importance of music in young people's lives. She taught singing and conducted choruses with inner-city children during her 2000-2002 affiliation with the Bronx Arts Ensemble's community- and school-based programs in the Bronx. With the late pianist Andrea Goodzeit, she developed a Music and Visual Arts workshop program for Horizon Concerts in NYC, which brought together elderly people in assisted living facilities with school children, to collaborate on art as a response to songs they heard. She was one of Ulster County BOCES' first Community Mentors. And she has been a visiting artist with both the Hudson Valley Philharmonic's and the Bard College/Red Hook School District's music-in-the-schools programs.

In 1993, Danielle founded the Artist in Residence Program at Holy Cross Church in Kingston, which included a concert series that ran for over a decade, and gave rise to a celebrated children's chorus, the Hudson Valley Youth Chorale. The HVYC, which continues to delight audiences locally and on its European tours, is conducted by Barbara Pickhardt; Danielle was the Chorale's 2005 Artist in Residence. In other community service, Danielle performs in benefits for arts, educational, environmental and progressive organizations--including joining actor James Earl Jones for one in Pawling, NY, at his request-- and leads the choral ensemble Voices for Peace.

Her own music education began with her singer parents, Charles and Marguerite Woerner, and while still in her teens she studied jazz singing with "cool jazz" great Lennie Tristano. She counts among her major classical/operatic mentors Nora Bosler, Martha Gerhart, Richard Getke, Thomas LoMonaco and Bethany Beardslee Winham. Danielle holds a B.A. in music from Bard College, and also attended Barnard and Hunter Colleges and the Université d’Aix-Marseille in Aix-en-Provence, France.

SERVICES

• INDIVIDUAL LESSONS

  Beginning to advanced singers are welcomed, with any and all musical interests, from opera to rock. Current students range from highly focused nine-and-ten-year-olds to men and women over 60.

  Audition preparation for NYSSMA, college entrance/scholarships, and shows is available; also, effective acting for singers; sight-singing; and basic music theory and ear training.

• RECORDING SESSION SUPPORT

  Planning a major recording session and wish you could have a coach in the booth to help solve on-site problems and bring out your vocal best? Danielle has executive-produced two commercial solo recordings in addition to her teaching expertise. Ask about her day rate.

• WORKSHOPS and CONFERENCES

  Corporate, mental health, geriatric, choir development and holistic retreat programs are all available. Successful topics already include “Finding Your Voice,” "The Joy of Singing," "Acting for Singers," "Healing Through the Voice," "Music and Art Intergenerational Workshops" (presented with a visual-arts collaborator), "Helping Your Choir to Sound Its Best" and "Chakra Balancing with Sound and Image" (also available as a joint workshop with a Kripalu yoga instructor). Danielle can formulate a workshop especially for your group's needs, drawing on her unique synthesis of mind-body work, insight, vocal pedagogy, acting and improv experience. Her lively sense of humor and her skill as a facilitator help create a safe space for participants to explore new territory.

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