—— STORY OF MY LIFE
About Linda Balliro
—— LET ME INTRODUCE
Linda Balliro, Voice teacher, vocal coach, speaker, presenter and author of “Being A Singer, the Art, Craft and Science.
Ms. Balliro’s teaching and coaching skills have been forged over two decades as an Associate Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music since 2014, Vienna Conservatory of Music from 2003-2006, and as a private voice teacher and vocal coach, in Boston and globally via remote teaching, since 2007. Ms. Balliro has successfully trained professional touring artists, college students, young professionals, recreational singers, kids and teens, teaching singers how to sing, rather than what to sing! She is particularly recognized for her skills in training singers to mix, extend their range to sing great high notes, eliminate difficulty in transitioning from chest to head voice or to extended high notes.
After graduating New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with a B.M. in Vocal Performance, she pursued a singing career in Europe, where she studied with several high-level teachers at opera houses in Budapest and Vienna, performing in opera, concerts and recitals throughout Central Europe for over a decade.
With more than twenty years experience mentoring with voice teachers from four different countries, pianists, vocal coaches, music directors, and conductors, Ms. Balliro began teaching voice lessons and singing coaching in Austria at the Vienna Conservatory.
Now, after almost 20 years performing, and 20 years of voice teaching, Ms. Balliro is developing online singing courses using the latest technology for the ultimate blended learning experience for singers.
After her first day in the studio Linda realized that teaching was the most fun she’d had without being on a stage in her entire life and that she’d reached a turning point in her career. Even with her classical training she knew she had a lot to learn and so she pulled out her pedagogy books, including those from her teacher Blair McClosky, and enrolled in pedagogy workshops. She studied Estill, Richard Miller, and worked with Austrian ENT’s, speech pathologists, and voice doctors. After a few years she saw her students who had been complete beginners, getting major roles at professional theaters and she knew she was hooked.
One of the biggest struggles she found with her students was that they would get frustrated when trying to express everything they wanted with their voices. They might be able to hit a note, but they couldn’t do it with the right emotion, or they could only do it by straining. Great singers aren’t great because they can string notes together or hit pitches, they are great because they can tell a story with their voices and express the emotions behind the music. Linda helped her students communicate ideas, emotions, and experiences through their singing. She found that their range, their tone, dynamics and style all revolve around their technique and the work they do on developing the way their voice actually works. Linda began to realize that there was a big hole in the voice training industry and that often students were being taught about music and what to sing but the mechanics behind how they were singing was being ignored. Ready to take her voice teaching to the next level, she began studying with Seth Riggs. She has trained with Mr. Riggs for over a decade to sharpen her skills in training students to develop consistent, flexible voices no matter what genre they were singing – like a clear, beautiful tone with great high notes for opera or learning to “lean into their mix” to get a belt sound or a rock yell.
Linda takes her vast experience as a classicaly trained singer, and her knowledge of pedagogy, vocolgy and voice mechanics, and applies them to all genres of music. This allows her students to get the voice they want – and that will carry them through their career in music whether they are broadway-bound kids that are just starting out, or they’re already touring for weeks at a time singing to stadiums full of fans.