About Mary Saunders
Mary Saunders is a Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a Master’s degree from Middlebury College, and the Sorbonne, Paris, studied with Pierre Bernac at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Musique. Associate Professor of Music, Head of Voice Instruction for the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre at Penn State University. Previously on the BFA Musical Theatre faculty at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. An active performer with Broadway, off-Broadway, film and television credits, Ms. Saunders has recently concentrated on the creation and performance of one-woman cabaret shows, the first of which, Stop, Time played to sell-out houses in New York City. In addition to her university teaching, she maintains a studio in Manhattan for professional singers. In this and recent seasons her students could be seen on Broadway in The Drowsy Chaperone, Wicked, Little Shop of Horrors, Urinetown, Hairspray, The Producers, Kiss Me Kate, Seussical, The Musical, Cabaret, Follies, 42nd Street, Rent, Boys From Syracuse, The 29th Annual Putnam Valley Spelling Bee and A Christmas Carol.
She is frequently invited to present her workshop/seminar Bel Canto/Can Belto for convocations of singers and teachers of singing in the U.S. and Europe. In recent years she has presented workshops and master classes for the National Association of Teachers of Singing in NYC, San Diego, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston, Providence, Albuquerque, Dallas-Fort Worth, New Orleans, and for the National Opera Association in Washington DC. She has presented internationally for the Voice Foundation Symposium in Philadelphia, The International Congress of Voice Teachers in Vancouver, BC, the International Sweet Adelines Educational Symposium in Greenville, SC, and the International Congress “Broadway an der Ruhr” in Dortmund, Germany. She has taught workshops at Ithaca College, Berklee School of Music, Illinois Wesleyan, San Diego State, American University, CaliforniaState-Fullerton, Wheaton College, Ouachita Baptist University and the University of Central Oklahoma and offers, with her colleagues, a summer workshop Bel Canto/Can Belto on the University Park campus at Penn State. Her DVD tutorial Bel Canto/Can Belto: Teaching Women to Sing Musical Theatre is being released in November, 2007.
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photo by Bill Wallace