Vocal Coaches
David Antony Lofton
Master Vocal Coach
Mr. Lofton is a native Philadelphian and a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano accompanying with Dr. Vladimir Sokoloff. He attended Westminster Choir College, where he developed his choral conducting skills. He has served as artistic director of Opera North (Opera Ebony). He was the accompanist for the voice studio of the late Todd Duncan for eight years and has been a recital collaborator for many renowned singers including Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Marietta Simpson and Nancy Fabiola Herrera. He has also served as coach and accompanist for the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition and participated in the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy where he was assistant conductor for televised productions of Carmen and Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Mr. Lofton has performed frequently as piano soloist as well as conducted concerts of operatic and symphonic music with the famed Harlem Boys Choir at Carnegie Hall. He joined The AVA music faculty in 1986. Prior to this appointment, he was a faculty member of The Curtis Institute of Music for ten years and taught at the Combs College of Music. He has recorded American Cotillions by Francis Johnson, and is the pianist for the 1994 CD Voices for Children, as well as American Jewels with soprano Yukiko Ishida. This season, he will again lead the highly acclaimed oratorio compendium "Jubilate!, A Concert of Sacred Music and Oratorio Masterpieces."
Danielle Orlando
Master Vocal Coach
Danielle Orlando is currently the Principal Opera Coach at The Curtis Institute of Music and serves as Master Coach on the music faculty of The Academy of Vocal Arts.
Ms. Orlando has collaborated with renowned tenor Luciano Pavarotti as accompanist, judge, and artistic coordinator for all of the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competitions. She also spent nine seasons working with Gian Carlo Menotti for the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy as an assistant conductor and coach, in addition to editing several of his compositions.
Ms. Orlando is associated with a long list of opera companies, festivals, and young artist programs which include the Metropolitan Opera; Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; Washington Opera (where she has collaborated with Placido Domingo); Michigan Opera Theater, Opera Company of Philadelphia (Artistic Administrator), Pittsburgh Opera, Portland Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, Festival dei due Mondi in Charleston, South Carolina, American Institute for Music Studies in Graz, Austria, European Center for Vocal Arts in Belgium, the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera; workshops in Mexico (Curso Intensivo de Perfeccionamiento de Opera); and New Jersey Opera.
Ms. Orlando began her piano studies at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and continued at the Eastman School of Music in New York. She earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance (summa cum laude) at Temple University where she has been named to The Gallery of Success.
She regularly accompanies internationally recognized artists and has performed on Good Morning America, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, Live by Request on A&E, the Rosie O'Donnell Show and Larry King Live accompanying celebrities Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, and Michael Bolton. Most recently Ms. Orlando accompanied tenor Marcello Giordani in recital at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Richard A. Raub
Master Vocal Coach
Mr. Raub is a twice summa cum laude graduate of West Chester University, in Pennsylvania; he has also studied privately with Martin Katz in New York. For the past twenty-two years he has worked at The Academy of Vocal Arts and is currently a master vocal coach, assisting the musical director and conducting operas. For nine seasons he served as assistant conductor, pianist, and supertitle operator at the Opera Company of Philadelphia (OCP). He served as supertitle operator for The Philadelphia Orchestra for several concert opera performances both at The Academy of Music and Carnegie Hall. He has also served on the music staffs of The Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, The Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, The Pittsburgh Opera Center, The Hollybush Festival in New Jersey, The Kent Blossom Festival in Ohio, and The University of the Arts and Temple University in Philadelphia. As an opera conductor, Mr. Raub has conducted performances of Puccini's Le villi, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Die Fledermaus, Don Pasquale, Così fan tutte, Richard Wargo's The Music Shop, and many productions of Hansel and Gretel at AVA and at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. He served as assistant conductor for Opera Carolina's production of Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree, and conducted the world premiere of Philadelphia composer Margaret Garwood's The Scarlet Letter; he has also conducted Massenet's Cendrillon at The Banff Centre and Don Giovanni at The Blossom Festival.
Mr. Raub has served as coach/pianist for The Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition and worked with Mr. Pavarotti as a recitative accompanist in OCP's production of L'elisir d'amore and as backstage conductor for Luisa Miller and Pittsburgh Opera's Tosca. He has performed with José Carreras, George Shirley, Benita Valente and Florence Quivar, Richard Leech, and Indra Thomas. In demand as a pianist for recitals, Mr. Raub has performed and recorded with singers throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. He made his Carnegie Hall debut during its hundredth Anniversary with mezzo-soprano and AVA alumna Wanda Brister, and has accompanied Wilhelmenia Fernandez (AVA alumna and star of the film Diva) in recital and on television. Mr. Raub has also accompanied three additional AVA alumni in their recital debuts: Stuart Neill at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, John Packard (Dead Man Walking) at the Ravinia Festival, and Richard Troxell (star of the film Madama Butterfly) at Salem College (North Carolina), and Penn State University, and AVA alumna Latonia Moore in her recital in the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, sponsored by the Opera Orchestra of New York.
Luke Housner
Vocal Coach
Mr. Housner has maintained a balanced schedule with a combination of vocal coaching, extensive performing, opera assembling, choral preparation and musical direction. Recent engagements for Mr. Housner include: guest vocal coach and assistant conductor at the Central City Opera Festival in Central City, Colorado, summer of 2006 where he coached, concretized, and played harpsichord for Mozart's Don Giovanni.
In March 2006, Mr. Housner musically directed, vocally coached and piano performed Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Academy of Vocal Arts. In 2007, he performed the same duties in Samuel Barber's Vanessa, and in 2008, he will music direct and accompany AVA's production of Janácek's Kat'a Kabánova.
In January 2006, Mr. Housner was a guest vocal coach at Portland Opera for their Young Artist Studio and concertized on the Oregon coast. He returned to Portland for two months of residency in the spring of 2006 for a Young Artist Studio recital, as well as serving as a coach, continuo player and chorus master for a mainstage production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. In March 2006, Mr. Housner was a guest vocal coach at Hong Kong's Academy of Performing Arts.
Mr. Housner was principal vocal coach for a production of Puccini's Turandot for the summer of 2005 at the Utah Opera Festival in Logan. In February, 2005, Mr. Housner served as Assistant Musical Director for Tchaikovsky's Iolanta at AVA.
In January, 2005, Mr. Housner musically prepared Wagner's Parsifal, Act III for Philadelphia Orchestra's Christoph Eschenbach's coachings with Matthias Hölle, Andreas Schmidt and John Keyes. In March, 2004 Mr. Housner musically prepared, musically directed and performed from the piano a conductor-less, fully staged production of Strauss' Elektra as part of the 2003-2004 AVA opera season. In 2003, Mr. Housner visited UC Davis for two recitals and a master class.
Over the past ten years with the Philadelphia Singers, Resident Chorale of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mr. Housner has performed on various subscription series concerts as pianist, organist and harpsichordist, served as rehearsal pianist and vocal coach for soloists and has played under the batons of Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sir Simon Rattle, Andrew Davis, and Kurt Masur. Mr. Housner joined the Academy of Vocal Arts music faculty and the Curtis Institute of Music opera department in 1996.
Native of Western Massachusetts, Mr. Housner earned a Master's Degree of Music in Vocal Accompanying and Coaching from University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana with instruction from internationally acclaimed vocal coach John Wustman. Previously, he received a Bachelor's Degree of Music, with a double major in Piano Performance and Vocal Accompanying from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.
Ghenady Meirson
Vocal Coach, Russian Repertoire
Educator, author, composer, pianist, and music industry entrepreneur Ghenady Meirson began studying piano at an early age in his native Odessa, Ukraine. He graduated from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At Curtis, he majored in piano, studying with Seymour Lipkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and in accompanying, studying with Dr. Vladimir Sokoloff.
In 1982, Mr. Meirson wrote a singer's manual entitled Do Sing in Russian and began specializing in Russian vocal repertoire. Since then, he coached countless artists for opera, oratorio, recitals, and recordings, and has assisted such organizations as The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Opera Company of Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Singers, and The Mendelssohn Club Chorus. Mr. Meirson coaches Russian repertoire at both The Academy of Vocal Arts and The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
In 1996, Mr. Meirson founded PrivateLessons.com, a membership-based network that connects the public with independent music teachers across the U.S. and Canada. Now an established leader in its niche, PrivateLessons.com helps thousands of musicians and over 150,000 visitors per month seeking private music teachers.
Laurent Philippe
Vocal Coach
Laurent Philippe’s particular interest in vocal repertoire has led him to associate with Metropolitan Opera Artists Stephen Costello, Ellie Dehn, Denyce Graves, Marcello Giordani, Keith Miller, Mark Oswald, Hugh Smith, and Valerian Ruminski. He has worked as a coach for The Canadian Opera Company, Michigan Opera Theatre, Florentine Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Opera Lyra, Opera San José, Seattle Opera, Temple University, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Théâtre du Châtelet, Princeton Festival, The New Jersey Opera Theatre and has lectured at the University of Lethbridge, The University of Cincinnati, Toronto’s Glen Gould School, Princeton University’s Atelier, and King’s College in Greenwich, England. His performances have been recorded by CBC Two New Hours and Arts National, VPRO Radio, Radio Canada, KING, Concertzender, BBC 1, BBC 3, WJUC, KBS, Danmarks Radio, and Radio-France, and for the recording labels JMP and EDS.
Laurent Philippe conducting credits include assisting Sir Andrew Davis at the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre and Royal Albert Hall, performances at the helm of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and several opera productions with the Victoria Symphony and the University of Washington orchestra.
In the field of contemporary music, Laurent Philippe is a member of Toronto's Continuum and frequently performs at the Music Gallery. Other appearances include Amsterdam's Ijsbreker, London's Canada House, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Printemps Musical Européen in Belgium, the Seattle Spring Festival, Copenhagen's Musica Nova, and Ottawa's Espace Musique.
Mr. Philippe’s most recent activities included joining Seattle Opera for their production of Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride”, visiting the Glen Gould School in Toronto for master classes and lectures and joining Continuum for 3 concerts before taking residency in Milwaukee as coach - répétiteur of Florentine Opera production of Strauss’ "Salome". Last Summer, he was in Crested Butte, Colorado as resident coach of the opera young artist program of the music festival.
Highlights of the current season include Mr. Philippe visiting Michigan Opera Theater for their reprise of Richard Danielpour’s "Margaret Garner" featuring Denyce Graves, a production that travels to Chicago's Roosevelt Auditorium later in the fall. In Toronto, he is performing with his group Continuum before embarking on an European tour with stops in Aberdeen, Amesterdam, S'Hertogenbosch, and Huddersfield. Next Spring, he is in Montreal concertizing with AVA Alum Elspeth Kincaid, and performing with Continuum in Toronto and Kitchener. Next Summer, he travels to Colorado as resident coach of the Crested Butte Music Festival.
A native of France, Laurent Philippe studied at the CNSM de Paris, from which he graduated with two Premier Prix. Soon after making his new home, he was appointed to the faculty of the department of music of the University of Ottawa. He then received his doctorate from the University of Washington, where he was invited to stay on the faculty as a guest lecturer for two years. He is currently on the Faculty of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, as well as guest faculty of the Glen Gould School in Toronto.
Laurent Philippe studied piano with Dominique Merlet, Jean Paul Sévilla, and Béla Síki, and conducting with Peter Erös.
