Trainer Profile

Dr. Corinne Ness is the dean of the arts and humanities at Carthage College, and the director of music theatre studies. Equally at home in classical and contemporary repertoire, Dr. Ness has performed in venues across the country. Her students have gone on to professional careers in opera and music theatre, with careers in performance, directing, teaching, and arts administration. Her students can be seen on stages in New York and Chicago, on national tours, on cruise ships, and in regional houses.Dr. Ness is a recognized expert in contemporary voice. She is a member of the Music Theatre Educators Alliance International, serving on the Advisory Board for Voice. In 2019, she presented at the MTEA conference on integrating learning theory into voice pedagogy. Dr. Ness has been invited to share her expertise on contemporary vocal pedagogy across the United States and Canada as a featured speaker for a variety of conventions, including the National Association of Teachers in Singing, the International Phenomenon of Singing, the Estill World Voice Symposium, the National Opera Association, and state music and theatre education conferences in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Dr. Ness has been featured in Classical Singer as a music theatre pedagogue (“Genre Wars” Classical Singer, Sept. 2008; “Deciphering Vocal Training” Classical Singer, July/Aug. 2010.) Her article on teaching music theatre was published in the Opera Journal in March 2014. Dr. Ness is a contributing author to The Voice Teacher’s Cookbook (2018), where she focuses on developing assessment practices in voice teaching. Dr. Ness is a regular guest artist in China, and was named a Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Music Theatre with the Beijing Dance Academy (BDA), one of the top music theatre programs in China. Over the past two decades, she has regularly visited China as a guest artist and music director for educational productions at a host of conservatories including the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Beijing Dance Academy, Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts (SIVA), Zhejiang Conservatory, Nanjing University for the Arts, Xi’An Conservatory, and the Central Academy of Theatre in Beijing. Her frequent collaborations with music theatre professionals in China led to her invitation to serve as a keynote speaker at the 2014 Music Theatre Conference at Shanghai Conservatory. Dr. Ness established a Visiting Scholars Program at Carthage which provides opportunities for Chinese teachers of American Music Theatre to learn and study pedagogical methods.Dr. Ness is also a respected choral conductor, having spent the early part of her career as a choral music educator. She maintains an interest in arts education and arts advocacy. Dr. Ness has presented workshops at the Arts Education Summit in Chicago, as well as for Urban Needs in Teacher Education (UNITE). She is a past member of the Arts Advocacy panel for Ingenuity Incorporated, the lead arts advocacy and research organization for Chicago arts education, and served as a trustee for the Music Institute of Chicago. Dr. Ness also has an interest in women's leadership, and was a Vice President of Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership from 2018 - 2019.Dr. Ness earned a B.M. in choral music education from Northern Illinois University and the M.M. with honors in vocal performance from Roosevelt University. Dr. Ness earned her Ph.D. with honors in cultural and educational policy study from Loyola University Chicago. Her dissertation research earned the "Dissertation of the Year' in 2012 and focused on the pedagogy of singing as it relates to culture and representation.