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Anne Peckham

Position
Chair
Affiliated Departments
Telephone
617-747-2513

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Anne Peckham is a singer, voice teacher, and author whose work has had a major worldwide impact on the field of contemporary vocal pedagogy. Chair of the Voice Department at Berklee College of Music since 2011, she has helped expand the college’s reputation as the best place in the world to study singing, especially contemporary styles. The Voice Department is the largest instrumental department at Berklee, serving the needs of more than 1,300 voice principals, with 75 dedicated faculty members.

For more than two decades before becoming chair, Peckham was a professor in the Voice Department. She has worked with many high-profile vocal performers, including Grammy winners and successful recording artists.

She has traveled extensively as a voice clinician and adjudicator for Berklee, as well as for song and choral festivals in North America, South America, Mexico, Europe, and China. Her master classes and vocal pedagogy seminars for students and teachers embrace the foundations of good vocal technique, while building skills in rock, jazz, pop, and R&B. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and served on the Boston chapter’s board of directors.

Peckham’s performing experience includes work with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and recordings with the Boston Pops. She has performed with regional theater companies and has worked as a professional soloist with area choirs.

She is the author of Vocal Workouts for the Contemporary Singer, The Contemporary Singer: Elements of Vocal Technique, and Berklee in the Pocket: Singer's Handbook. Her Contemporary Singer books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. They are used as texts in many college voice programs and are widely considered an important bridge between traditional and contemporary vocal pedagogy.

Career Highlights
  • Performer, vocal instructor, clinician, choral director, and specialist in musical theater
  • Member of the board of Boston chapter of National Association of Teachers of Singing and American Choral Directors Association
  • Adjudicator for choral festivals
  • Performances with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus
  • Author of Vocal Workouts for the Contemporary SingerThe Contemporary Singer: Elements of Vocal TechniqueBerklee in the Pocket: Singer's Handbook, and the instructional DVD Vocal Technique: Developing Your Voice for Performance
Education
  • B.M., Butler University
  • M.M., University of Tennessee
In Their Own Words

"Berklee is a place where students can sing the music that they love. Whether it's original songs, classical music, musical theater, rock, or any other style, vocalists will find a home in Berklee's Voice Department."

"Vocalists can sing in a deeply personal and expressive manner, using vocal technique to fully express the music that speaks to them as an artist. In the Voice Department at Berklee, we don’t produce cookie-cutter singers. We encourage vocalists to bring out the best in their unique voices and help them to develop their full vocal and personal potential. The basic tenants of vocal technique; support, full use of vocal range, free tone production, flexible use of tone colors, resonance, and placement—have to be habituated for vocalists to be fully expressive. We train vocalists to use technique as the underpinning that allows them to sing freely with personal expression, with the level of stamina it takes to be a performing artist for a lifetime of singing."