Lisa Stidham

  • Teacher of Vocal Studies

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA in music, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1978
  • MA in musicology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983
  • MM in voice, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 1985
  • DMA in vocal performance, University of Southern California, 2006

Biography

Soprano Lisa Stidham has taught voice students of all ages and levels for the past 35 years. Her holistic, whole-body approach to teaching singing emphasizes alignment-based, healthy singing in multiple styles. She has sung in opera, concerts, and recitals in the United States, Europe, Australia, and South America, presenting repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Mozart, Purcell to Britten, and especially living American composers such as John Harbison, Donald Crockett, and Stephen Hartke.

Stidham has performed with the São Paulo Municipal Orchestra, as guest soloist at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and as a guest artist at the University of Tasmania, among other engagements. She gave the West Coast premiere of Harbison’s Samuel Chapter and the world premiere of Hartke’s Sons of Noah with the University of Southern California Contemporary Music Ensemble. Her subsequent recording of that work was praised by New York Times music critic Anthony Tomassini as “a tour de force, a miniature opera written (as a birthday gift!) for the composer’s wife, Lisa Stidham, who makes the most of the dramatic and musical opportunities here.”

Stidham is also a veteran of opera and musical theater stages, with performances in the roles of Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, the title role in Flotow’s Martha, Marsinah in Kismet, and she toured as Mercedes in Victor Borge’s version of Carmen.  

A past president and program chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Stidham teaches a beginning voice class and voice lessons for non-music majors at Oberlin Conservatory. She has been a member of the voice faculty of numerous colleges and universities in Southern California, including Scripps College, Biola University, the University of Southern California, CalArts, Pasadena City College, and California State University, Los Angeles. She was also a vocal coach for the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, a guest clinician for the Choristers Guild of Southern California, and an adjudicator for many vocal competitions in the region.

Stidham holds a DMA in vocal performance from the University of Southern California, an MM in voice from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and MA and BA degrees in musicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her teachers include Peggy Norcross, Martial Singher, Margery McKay, Donald Stenberg, Judith Natalucci and Elizabeth Hynes. She maintains a private voice studio at her home in Oberlin and is an enthusiastic equestrian, gardener, and practitioner of Iyengar yoga.

Stephen Hartke: Sons of Noah. XTET. New World Records 80567-2

Stephen Hartke: Iglesia abandonada. Ronald Copes, violin. Orion ORS 84470