Education
- BM, Furman University, 2001
- BA, Furman University, 2001
- MM, University Michigan Ann Arbor, 2004
- DMA, University Michigan Ann Arbor, 2007
Biography
Thomas Bandy is an opera and vocal coach at Oberlin Conservatory, where he teaches Italian and German lyric diction and serves as the music director for main stage opera productions. He also has taught seminars in Czech and Russian lyric diction and vocal repertoire.
From 2008 until 2011, he was assistant professor of vocal coaching at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught lyric diction and seminars on French mélodie. Bandy has also been on the faculty of the summer Taos Opera Institute in New Mexico as Czech, Russian, and Italian coach.
During the 2007-2008 school year, he was an assistant professor of collaborative piano at Oberlin Conservatory, where he directed the vocal and instrumental accompanying programs. During the summer of 2008, he was pianist and coach at Oberlin’s Richard Miller Vocal Arts Symposium.
Bandy finished his doctoral studies in collaborative piano with Martin Katz in 2007 at the University of Michigan. He has played in the voice studios of Shirley Verrett and George Shirley, among many others.
He is an active chamber musician and vocal coach in many languages as well, specializing in Russian and Czech diction and vocal literature. He is a 2001 summa cum laude graduate of Furman University in South Carolina, with degrees in piano and philosophy.