Students may take private lessons in voice, piano, guitar, and a variety of orchestral, band and world instruments.
Please contact the Director of Music Performance, Shou-Ping Liu, for a list of the studio instructors, all of whom teach the lessons at Taylor Music Center. The cost of lessons is not included in the College's tuition. It costs $500 per term for nine lessons of 50 minutes each. After completing three terms satisfactorily, a student earns one-course credit. Two practicum credits may count toward graduation. The Registrar records all terms of lessons that a student completes satisfactorily on the student’s transcript, including those beyond the two credits. With the approval of the studio instructor and after completing a jury, a student may perform at the student recital held at the end of each term.
Affiliate Artists
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Norman Thibodeau - Flute
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Cliff Brucker - Percussion
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André Laurent O'Neil - Cello
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Teresa Gatta Norton - Violin
Teresa Gatta Norton began her musical journey studying with Marianne Moreland Pashler and Lois Lyman, two of the most highly acclaimed violin teachers in the New York Capital District. Teresa performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center with the Empire State Youth Orchestra, then conducted by Bertram Kaplan of the Manhattan School of Music and continued her studies at the Ithaca College School of Music. She is a member of the first violin section of the Schenectady Symphony, the Union College Community Orchestra and performs regularly with many other area ensembles. Teresa spends summers traveling through Europe performing with the Varna International Orchestra. She is an Affiliate Artist at Union College and has reunited with ESYO as Strings Teaching Artist in the CHIME program coaching ensembles and teaching privately. She is also affiliated with the Etude Club of Schenectady and the Music Study Group.
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Nicole Rizzo - Voice
Nicole Rizzo is a mezzo-soprano and voice teacher based in New York’s Capital Region. After earning her B.M.
in Voice Performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2020, she has gone on to perform as an
Emerging Artist at Opera in the Ozarks and as a chorister in Boston Lyric Opera’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Locally,
she has had the privilege of performing with the Schenectady Chamber Music Series on several occasions. Her
teaching philosophy is to instill a strong classical foundation in students’ technique, as well as an understanding
and appreciation of the repertoire. She previously maintained a voice studio at Modern Day Music School in
Clifton Park. Performance credits include Roméo et Juliette (Stéphano) at the Brevard Music Center, The Turn of
the Screw (Mrs. Grose), The Consul (Vera Boronel), and Dialogues des Carmélites (Mère Jeanne), all at the
Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Rizzo also studied Voice Performance and Communication at the State
University of New York, College at Geneseo. During her time at Geneseo, Rizzo was a winner of the 2017
Geneseo Concerto-aria competition, the 2016 Geneseo Honors Music competition, and performed as a soloist
with the Geneseo Symphony Orchestra. -
Evan Runyon - Guitar and Double Bass
Evan Runyon is a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a repertoire spanning six centuries, active in traditional and modern media across manifold genre, whose playing has been called "steadfast" (Houston Chronicle) and "imperious" (New York Times), and music "dread-inducing...wild" (Baltimore Sun).
He has performed and/or recorded with Klangforum Wien, Talea Ensemble, The Knights, International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble and Ensemble Signal; Raphael Saadiq, Wye Oak, Emily Wells, Thundercat and Slipknot.
As an orchestral musician, Evan is a member of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, performs regularly with the American Composers Orchestra and Albany Symphony, and has been guest principal with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Wiener Walzer Orchester.
A prolific session player, he has contributed performances and arrangements to tracks with combined streams in the tens of millions as well as to scores for major motion pictures, television shows and AAA videogames.