Violin , Voice, Beginner Piano, Teacher in NYC

Liz Kiger teaches voice lessons at Riverside Music Studios in NYC. They are a Turkish-American non-binary soprano vocalist, violinist, and opera director specializing in Baroque performance practice. They are also the director of Collegium Musicum at Columbia University.

As founder and director of the Brooklyn Telemann Chamber Society, one of the first primarily digital opera companies, Liz brings opera to new audiences through inclusion and accessibility. Brooklyn Telemann Chamber society is focused on providing LGBTQIA emerging artists with opportunities reinterpreting Baroque operas as feature films.  Liz’s work with BTCS has been featured on numerous podcasts: most notably via @360ofopera and OperaWire.com.

They hold their MM in Classical Vocal Performance and a post graduate degree in Vocal Pedagogy from NYU and received a BA in Music History and Vocal Performance from Goucher College.

Liz Kiger has recently performed as:

•  Persephone in a 1774 Vienna transcription of Gluck’s Orfeo
• The title role in Monteverdi’s Poppea, Papagena (Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte)
• Ottavia (Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea) at Scorca Hall (National Opera Center
• Susanna (Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro) at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

Oratorio works include: soprano soloist (Messiah), soprano soloist (The Creation) soprano soloist (Magnificat), and Dafne (Apollo e Dafne).

They have a specialty interest and focus on the history of Castrati in early opera, as they are often called upon to perform these roles due to the unique timbre of their voice brought about by their vocal pathology.

Liz is a proud advocate for singers who also have incurable vocal pathologies and has extensive training in working with singers with various pathologies through NYU Langone’s postgraduate vocology program.

When not working with singers, Liz also conducts and directs string ensembles and loves working with adult clients who are new to learning an instrument. Liz studied violin and viola concurrently under the Benjamin Podolski school for eleven years and has performed professionally with numerous string quartets as well as youth orchestras as principle violist and principle second violin.

They teach violin and viola via the Schradiek and Suzuki methods and have experience working with students ages 4 – 60 via private violin lessons and through group classes in New York public schools.

Liz loves teaching both classical study of violin as well as Blue Grass and Fiddle music (as a nod to their childhood in West Virginia.) They believe that while violin is a discipline it should also be fun and encourages playing pop music in conjunction with the classical study methods.

They believe wholeheartedly in music literacy; their students learn theory and reading capabilities in conjunction with their study.

Liz’s current students have tested into music programs at Mark Twain middle school, Bay Academy middle school, Juilliard Pre-college program, and LaGuardia. Their older students have been accepted to undergraduate conservatory programs at Mannes, NYU, & Brooklyn Conservatory.