Michelle J. Crouch

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Voice

• Phone: 309-794-7239
• Email: MichelleCrouch@augustana.edu
• Office: Bergendoff Hall

Michelle Crouch, born and raised on the Canadian prairies, started studying music at a very young age, and pursued both piano and voice in college. She remembers explaining subjects like algebra and grammar to her classmates in middle school, and enjoying it, which was her first clue that she was wired like a teacher.

Voice eventually came to dominate her professional music pursuits. She has sung in several award-winning vocal ensembles under some of the finest conductors in the world. She performs a wide range of solo and chamber vocal repertoire, from medieval music to music written yesterday, and loves the enormous diversity of vocal expression written for singers, a love she seeks to pass on to her students.

Her primary research interest is musical literacy, particularly for singers, who tend to lag behind instrumentalists in general music education. Over the last 15 years as a singing teacher, she has observed a clear connection between literacy and advanced vocal skill, and her vocal pedagogy intentionally cultivates that connection. She is keen to help musicians to read more fluently, with less reliance on the piano, more immediate commitment to singing phrases, and more skill in singing the nuances of the poetry. With so much interesting and beautiful vocal music to sing, both as soloists and in ensembles, there is no time to lose in equipping people to sing it all.

Specializations: Vocal music, Musicianship, Musical literacy , Pedagogy, Opera, Musical theatre