Spotlight: BUTI Young Artists Vocal Program
The 2022 Young Artists Vocal Program (YAVP) will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. You will grow, learn, sing, and perform in ways you might never have imagined, and meet peers who you will know for a lifetime.
YAVP Director, Penelope Bitzas, is an Associate Professor of Music in Voice at Boston University and in 2007 earned the prestigious Metcalf Award, which is BU’s highest honor for excellence in teaching. In her early career as a singer, she concertized in the United States and abroad, was a National Semi-Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and was a member of the Minnesota Opera Studio. She has premiered new works, was a two-summer Tanglewood Fellow, and is a champion of Greek Art Song. She has a long career as a national and international educator, and has been one of the leading vocal pedagogues in the country for the past 20 years. In short, she is the very model of a professional singer and pedagogue. Using her experience in the field, she is leading a 6-week BUTI vocal program for top level high school singers that trains your voice and improves your technique and is so much more than just a vocal bootcamp.
The Young Artists Vocal Program is focused on healthy solo singing. We want to help you reach the next level in your technique and artistry, and show you how to continue that work on your own and with your teachers when you head back home. The program invites and pushes you to perform at your best in weekly individual voice lessons, individual vocal coachings, and masterclasses. But, we also know that your future is full of much more than just excellent vocal technique.
What sets BUTI apart is not just the standard of musicianship we hold ourselves to, but the many different ways in which we explore the vocal arts. During your time in Lenox, MA, you’ll also be instructed and guided toward excellence in diction, movement, and acting. You will put your stage skills to the test during Opera Scenes rehearsals and performances, and you’ll be encouraged to break out of your shell and learn new ways to work, communicate, and create with others.
Professor Bitzas knows exactly the right balance between applied and academic learning, and has tailored this program for your success during and beyond BUTI. With classes in Music Theory, Music History, Performance Skills, college readiness, and career choices, you will have all of the tools you need to move confidently into your next stage of life and music making. And you’ll complete the experience by singing in a chorus full of the most talented singers of your time. Professor Bitzas and our choral conductor, Katie Woolf, have prepared an exciting and powerful program for our return to Tanglewood. You’re not going to want to miss this.
If you have any doubt that this is the program to go to this summer, don’t just take it from us. Take it from the incredible success of students who have come from this program. Our students have gone on to perform on some of the biggest stages in the world, they have gone to finals of the MET competitions, and have joined prestigious opera companies. And these wins happen year.after.year. Just last month, the top two out of three winners in the Classical Singer Fall Competition were BUTI alumni!
Our students get more out of this experience than just “being a better singer.” They grow as people and members of the artistic community and take that wherever they go into their future. One of our past students puts it perfectly:
“One of my biggest takeaways from my experience at BUTI is to be willing to take risks even though you may be hesitant. It is better to get something wrong than to not try at all.”
And that is exactly what Professor Bitzas, the voice and coaching faculty, and all of us here at BUTI have created for you: A place where you feel safe to test and exceed your own expectations of yourself. We hope you’ll join us for our return to Tanglewood this summer. BUTI is Back! And we know you’re going to love it.