Charleston Academy of Music

Emily C. Eagen
Emily Eagen is a versatile singer who performs in a wide variety of genres, including Folk, Medieval, Baroque, Classical, and Experimental. Emily studied music at Macalester College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and trained as an actor and director with the Wesley Balk Opera/Music-Theater Institute. She became a regular performer of Baroque opera through such roles as Venus in Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate under director Andrew Lawrence King, and honed her craft as a contemporary music soloist in the Music X festival at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music.

On a Fulbright Scholarship and a Beebe Fellowship (2001), Emily began intensive study of Early and Contemporary music at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, the Netherlands, studying under Jill Feldman, Diane Forlano, and Michael Chance. For the past five years, Emily has worked as a singer and teacher on both sides of the Atlantic, and relocated to New York City in 2007, where she quickly became an active performer of Early, Contemporary, and Folk music.

Emily is an experienced teacher in a range of genres and formats. From 2002-2006 she was a voice and piano teacher at the International School of the Hague, teaching private technique lessons, vocal ensembles, songwriting classes, and ensemble workshops for both adults and teens. She founded the a cappella World Music ensemble Joining Voices, and was music director for the school's theater production of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.  Emily is a regular instructor and performer at the Amherst Early Music Festival and the Augusta Heritage Center, where she has taught classes in Folk, Medieval, Sephardic, Baroque and Contemporary repertoire as well as vocal technique for all ages and levels. In all these genres, her emphasis is on encouraging freedom and expression by connecting the voice to the body and to the imagination.

In 2006 Emily led a series of workshops on improvisation and contemporary music in Mostar, Bosnia (September 2006). Currently, Emily gives workshops around the city as a teaching fellow through Carnegie Hall, and teaches a monthly southern harmony class at the Jalopy Theater and School of Music in Brooklyn. Also a professional, international award-winning whistler, Emily has given numerous whistling workshops and, in 2005, founded the Augusta Heritage Center Whistling Chorale.