Our Instructors

Judy

Voice

Throughout human history, singing is one of the greatest natural capacities that a human being is endowed with as a vehicle for expressing the full range of our thoughts, our yearnings and emotions. The human body itself, is designed as the actual instrument to produce the sounds, through which the melodies and rhythms we know as song can flow. After a lifetime of songwriting, singing and performing, I began teaching singing technique for vocal production at Blue Sky Music Studios nearly a decade ago and feel totally blessed by the experience! I love it here and have from the first!  Scott and Heather Apicelli, the studio’s founders and directors, my colleagues, and my students all make for an outstanding musical community.

My own background in the arts prepared me well for this rich opportunity. Dancing for years as a girl, studying theater in NYC with the renowned Stella Adler, one of the most famous acting teachers in American Theater history and later completing a theater degree from Skidmore College with a minor in music, were important academic achievements. I am a perpetual student and have studied vocal technique for singing throughout my life with some of the most highly respected voice teachers in the Capital District and New York City. I’ve acted and sung on stages on the East and West Coast, founded two bands who played original music, Skyland Band on Martha’s Vineyard and Hidden River Band, from Saratoga and Connecticut, and recorded two albums of my own songs here at Blue Sky: Fire In Your Heart, with Hidden River and Girl in the Silver Leaves with the Blue Sky Project, and produced a video with my song Are We Riding the Titanic Through the Stars, for YouTube. My two musical plays, which I scripted and composed the music for, To See Another Spring in 2017 and Rosemary’s Anahata and The Sound of the Rose in 2022, played to sold out houses at Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, the famous and longest running coffee house in America.

The 34 years I have spent as a yoga instructor at my business Joy of Yoga have also given me a deep understanding of breath control, posture, and relaxation which comprise some of the most fundamental aspects of vocal production.

All of this experience and more have manifested in powerful and meaningful ways through my life as a singing teacher. I am a born communicator and cherish relationship. I am devoted to encouraging each of my students of all ages, from 5 to 86, how to connect with their own voice, their own vocal instrument….with themselves. My students grow through training and practice, in skill and confidence, as they mature in singing and song interpretation and gain a repertoire in a wide range of popular music, including Motown, Rock n’ Roll, Broadway, Jazz and The Great American Songbook. I have produced student concerts here, year after year, to audiences who say they’d pay to come hear our shows! One of my students won Best Emerging Artist at the famed Apollo Theatre. Others have won significant parts in school plays, gotten into musical programs at distinguished colleges, and become songwriters and recording artists themselves through our work on songwriting.

I am a singing teacher of mind, heart and soul who feels so grateful to help my students here at Blue Sky achieve their singing goals and dreams and nurture a love for music and life.

Looking forward to meeting you for the joy of singing!

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