THE Real Transformations from Artistic Directors
Real stories from Artistic Directors who elevated their vocal mastery.
Chrissellene created Vocal Justice for Performers!
Confidence and Voice balances everyone’s ability to control their performing lives.
Performance Mode is not only an invaluable tool for any performer, it is a key element in surviving in the performing arts. The demands placed on the singer and the actor are extraordinary and made all the more personal because the live performer is their own instrument. This often makes criticism hard to swallow, because what you do and who you are can often feel inextricably linked. This also makes it quite difficult for performers to take a good, hard, objective look at themselves.
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Performance Mode is a means of looking at both you and your work with an objective set of eyes-and the only real way to synthesize both positive and negative criticism in any helpful way. As a Director, I have seen many very experienced performers sabotage their work both onstage and off by letting their emotions get the best of them. Whether you’re on Broadway, at a major Opera House, or at a Community Theater, Performance Mode can only help you not take things personally, but also understand yourself better.
Learning the 7 Commands means you can achieve the muscular ability and technique to sing any repertoire you want. After seeing the cool, hard facts of the human voice and how one can go about strengthening it, all other methods look lightweight and unreliable. So many performers spend their livelihoods worrying about vocal health, and the Commands outline the most straightforward method for protecting, strengthening, and maintaining your voice so you won’t have to worry about it again!
Alan Paul
Artistic Director of Barrington Stage Company
The results have been nothing short of transformative!
Chrissellene’s explanations are based on science and physiology, so that we no longer have to rely on fanciful estimations and inaccurate illusions.
I have assiduously applied her methods to all my work as a choral conductor and vocal coach ever since, and the results have been nothing short of transformative! My ensembles are singing safely and sounding great!
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I am so very grateful to Chrissellene for her vocal expertise, and for her positive approach to performance.
Marina Alexander
Music Director
Vocal Mastery made my dreams come true!!!
When I started lessons, I was a very frightened high school kid with very little confidence. Ever since I was a small child I wanted to perform, and make my life in the theatre.
But I was constantly allowing fear and my emotions to stand between me and success. I came to her wanting voice lessons, but what I got in addition to the vocal Commands, which allowed me to have a kind of vocal control and sound I never knew was possible, was a set of skills to be able to interact in this world and the theatre industry that I never knew I needed.
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A set of skills without which I would certainly not be where I am today.
Without Chrissellene, I am sure that that path would have led me away from what I loved, to a life that seemed easier to attain. But with Chrissellene’s constant encouragement and belief in me, coupled with the toolkit of confidence, objectivity, Performance Mode, and the Commands, I am able to pursue my dream of a life in the theatre.
Today, in addition to loving acting, I am a theatre director.
Madelein Smith
Theater Director
Miss Petropoulos has found the way to wed scientific fact to the great art of music!!!
I had the great pleasure of attending a presentation by Chrissellene Petropoulos of the results of her lifelong investigation into exactly how the singing voice works. I am not a scientist, and cannot evaluate her findings from that point of view, but I have spent a lifetime working with opera singers.
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Everything Miss Petropoulos said made great sense to me. In addition, there is the rather conclusive evidence that Miss Petropoulos sings very well—in fact, better than ever in her life. And there is the incontrovertible fact that all of her students, of which there are many, sing very well, too.
Miss Petropoulos has found the way to wed scientific fact to the great art of music!
William Yannuzzi
Music Director, Baltimore Opera Company (The Late)
At best, she may be a genius in her field that has discovered truly valuable information!!!
Her name is Chrissellene Petropoulos and she is for real. I say this because to actually meet her is to encounter such exuberance, optimism, and vitality that one’s first reaction justifiably is, “Hey, no one could be this upbeat and be for real.” Chrissellene is, at least for the past 25 years I have known her. And she’s real-world smart.
I met her at Strathmore Arts Center a quarter of a century ago when she offered to help us get started in Montgomery County. A world-experienced singer and vocal coach, she puts her whole heart into whatever (and whoever) she is teaching.
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Over the years since then, I have watched her add wisdom to her incredible knowledge base, creating value far beyond most of her contemporaries, especially in the development of the voice.
Recently, she came to my office and briefed me on her project of the last 12 years, The Technical Commands to Vocal Mastery. I was struck by the science behind the technique and the subsequent methods she developed to take the mystery out of vocal training. It may not endear her to some voice teachers who depend primarily on visualization techniques because her methods debunk many of the classic vocal coaching techniques by using real-time MRI images of proper throat posturing and control.
I believe she and her colleagues have finally done the hard work of scientific research made possible by the invention of new, innovative, and non-intrusive medical diagnostic technology. Good for her.
I commend her to you. All I ask is that you give her an audience, if she requests one. It will not be a waste of your time or attention, even if your missions don’t eventually align. At the very least, she is a contagious, optimistic presence well worth experiencing.
At best, she may be a genius in her field that has discovered truly valuable information.
Eliot Pfanstiehl
Artistic Director at Strathmore Hall (Retired)