STUDIO of Musical Theater, Voice & Piano

An alumna of The Crowden School in Berkeley, California, Vanessa Langer is a voice instructor and featured soprano soloist for new works for soprano and orchestra. Vanessa brings an extensive experience in guiding students of all ages and backgrounds, cultivating a teaching style that incorporates a holistic approach, covering not only technical aspects but also the emotional and expressive dimensions of singing. A Bay Area native, Vanessa is the founder and director of the Firesong ensemble as well as a former core member of the Wild Rumpus
Ensemble.

Various of her commission projects have been supported by major grants from the Zellerbach Foundation, New Music USA and Chamber Music of America. Featured soloist on the Pinna records label, Vanessa has given notable Bay Area premieres including Fausto Romitelli’s ‘Index of Metals’. Vanessa was named a New Horizon Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, served two Music Winter Residencies at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta Canada and won the Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement in the Arts and the Albert King Scholarship from the University of California at Berkeley.

Her earliest musical studies included coaching Bach cantatas with Anne Crowden or the Junior Bach Festival, productions of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and the children’s chorus in San Francisco Opera, as well as early music studies with David Tayler in the Collegium Musicum of UCBerkeley. Vanessa studied voice with Susanne Mentzer, Dawn Upshaw, and Laura Aikin as well as coached with breath specialist Deborah Birnbaum. She received a B.A. in Music from UCBerkeley, and M.M. cum laude in Classical Voice from DePaul University and a Master in Vocal Arts from Bard College Conservatory.

Vanessa lives with her son and husband in Milan, Italy where she is a vocal instructor and guides a vocal curriculum at the St Louis School of Milan.

Education

B.A. Music, University of California at Berkeley
M.M. cum laude in Voice, DePaul University
M.M. Master in Vocal Arts Graduate Vocal Fellowship, Bard College Conservatory of Music

Teaching Artist

Vanessa Langer received her formal vocal training with Dawn Upshaw at the Bard Graduate Vocal Fellowship program and with Susanne Mentzer as a New Horizon Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival & School. Vanessa returned to her native California to join the newly founded contemporary music ensemble, Wild Rumpus, as their lead vocalist with whom she performed contemporary works including ‘Index of Metals’ by Fausto Romitelli and excerpts from the ‘Kafka Fragments’ by Gyorgy Kurtag with guest violinist Joseph Maile of the Telegraph Quartet. During her tenure, the ensemble was selected for Chamber Music America and New Music America awards. With performances praised as a “showcase of virtuosity and imagination” by San Francisco Classical Voice, Wild Rumpus saw its mission to challenge and delight audiences by revealing beauty in unexpected places and resonances that transcend boundaries of generation, geography, and genre.

Vanessa established her own chamber music ensemble, Firesong, which raised funds to commission leading young composers, and to produce their work alongside rarely performed vocal chamber masterworks, winning grants from the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. 

In addition to her professional performing activities as a vocal artist, Vanessa has pursued her joy for training young talented musicians as a voice instructor and coach, piano instructor and as a teaching artist in master-classes at the Crowden Music School, the French American School and Walden School.Most recently she has served as head vocal instructor at the Accademia Stabat Mater in Rho, Milano, where she gained experience teaching in a bilingual context, teaching in both Italian and English.Formal teaching experience include substitute music teacher at New York City’s Hunter College High School and vocal coach and pianist at the New Conservatory Theater of San Francisco.