Emily Klavun Ruthen
About
I'm Emily — a classically trained singer, actor, and voice teacher with a Master of Music in Voice & Opera and over a decade of experience helping singers of all ages find their voice and fall in love with using it. I founded Empowered Singing on one simple belief: every voice has something worth developing, and the right teacher can help you hear it.
My training is rooted in classical technique — breath support, resonance, registration, and the kind of foundation that makes any style of singing feel more effortless and sustainable. I work with students across a wide range of styles goals: opera and art song, musical theater, pop, folk, and everything in between. Whatever you want to sing, we build from the voice out.
I'm also currently completing graduate training in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Emerson College — which means I bring a genuinely science-informed perspective on vocal health and how the voice actually works. If you've dealt with fatigue, strain, or just want to understand your instrument more deeply, that background matters.
Teaching Style
My approach starts with one conviction: every voice is already doing something right. My job is to help you hear it, build on it, and get out of your own way.
Lessons with me are grounded in classical technique — real breath support, resonance, registration, and the kind of physical awareness that makes singing feel freer rather than more effortful. I trained in opera and musical theater and spent years performing before I understood how much great singing is really just smart, efficient use of what you already have. That realization shapes how I teach.
I work across styles — classical, musical theater, pop, folk, choral — because the technique transfers regardless of genre. What doesn't transfer is a one-size-fits-all warm-up or a rigid method that ignores the person in front of me. Every lesson is built around your voice, your goals, and where you are that day.
Students often tell me they leave lessons not just sounding better, but understanding why — why a certain exercise unlocks their upper register, why jaw tension is affecting their tone, why breath is the answer to almost everything. I believe that understanding your voice is part of owning it.
My students range from complete beginners to working performers. What they have in common is that they show up willing to work — and they leave singing with more resonance, a broader range, and a deeper ability to inhabit and interpret a song. Confidence follows naturally from that. When you can actually hear yourself improving, you can't help but believe in your voice.
Curriculum
My teaching draws from a classical tradition passed down through some of the most respected voices in American opera and vocal pedagogy. My primary voice teachers include Sherry Overholt, DMA, who trained with legendary soprano Phyllis Curtin at Yale and Tanglewood; Bonnie Hamilton at Purchase Conservatory of Music; and Jacque Trussel, tenor of the Metropolitan Opera. I also worked closely with Hugh Murphy, a master coach whose musicianship and interpretive instincts shaped how I approach song repertoire to this day.
That lineage gives my teaching its backbone: breath as the foundation of everything, a free and resonant tone built from the inside out, and technique that serves the voice rather than constraining it.
The other half of my method comes from the stage. I trained in acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Ron Stetson and Richard Pinter, both trained directly by Sanford Meisner — and that influence runs through everything I do with song interpretation. A technically beautiful voice that has nothing to say is only half the job. I also studied musical theater with Ron Shetler of Shetler Studios, NYC, and worked with master teachers in Voice, Speech, and Alexander Technique, including Gary Ramsey and Jane Kozminsky.
The result is a teaching method rooted in classical technique, informed by the science of the voice (I'm currently completing graduate training in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Emerson College), and alive to the demands of performance. Whether you're preparing an aria, a Sondheim ballad, or a pop song that means something to you — we work from the voice out, and from the meaning in.
Credentials & Affiliations
I hold a Master of Music in Voice and Opera from the SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Music, a Bachelor of Arts in Music (cum laude) from Skidmore College, and an Associate of Arts in Theater from The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. I am currently an M.S. candidate in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Emerson College, pursuing graduate training in Speech-Language Pathology with a focus on voice.
My performing career has spanned opera, musical theater, cabaret, and concert work across regional stages, national tours, and international venues. Highlights include:
Performance Credits
- Marina (lead) in The Ghost Net: An Environmental Musical of the Sea — The Grumbling Gryphons, Northeastern U.S. Tour
- Mother in Menotti’s Amahl & The Night Visitors; Second Lady in Mozart’s The Magic Flute; Mother Abbess in Puccini’s Suor Angelica — Purchase Opera, Performing Arts Center Mainstage, Purchase, NY
- Professional Soloist — Lake George Opera Festival / Opera Saratoga (youngest professional singer hired)
- Saratoga Performing Arts Center
- Art Song Festival — Bernried, Germany; concert performances in Vienna, Austria and Madrid, Spain
- Irene Roth in Crazy for You and Gloria Upson in Mame — The Sharon Playhouse, CT
- Diva Nights — Featured Soloist — The Sharon Playhouse, CT
- Due Soprani — Dinner Concert Series — Verdura Cucina Rustica, Great Barrington, MA
- Stepmother in Cinderella — SAIL Productions national tour, Southern and Southwestern U.S.
Teaching Background
My teaching background includes directing and instructing students at Barrington Stage Company’s KidsAct theater camp; performing the lead role of Marina in The Ghost Net while bringing environmental storytelling through music to young audiences across the Northeast with The Grumbling Gryphons; coaching opera scenes and undergraduate vocal diction at Purchase Conservatory; and over a decade of private voice lessons with students ranging from beginners to performers working in professional and community theater, school productions, and beyond.
I founded Empowered Singing to bring all of that together — the technique, the stage experience, the science, and the genuine belief that singing is one of the most powerful ways a person can know themselves and communicate with others.