Eleonor England
DATES IN BAY AREA: Genrally Decemeber/January, May, August, November (dates on website)
Los Angeles-born NYC jazz vocalist Eleonor England has been named one of the “creme de la creme USA and world best” jazz voices by French jazz critic Maximilien DeLafayette, been called “A world-class voice” by JazzReview, and been the critics choice in many majour newspaper calendar sections, playing to audiences of upto 1000.
As an educator, she founded “Voice Studios of Eleonor England” in 1999 (San Francisco expanding to Hollywood and San Diego) where she’s trained pop, rock, blues, R&B, and jazz singers ranging from beginners with personal goals through international divas. Of only those who started with her as beginners, her clients have gone on to GRAMMY nominations, multiple certified top 10 and #1 hits, The Voice, American Idol, Superstar K (Korea), Super Idol (Taipei) having certified platinum-selling recordings, being signed to majour labels (US, Asia, EU), international tours, playing sold out stadium shows, etc. She’s worked extensively with recording artists and amateurs alike in Hollywood, San Francisco, NYC, and in her EU studio based out of Amsterdam.
As a teacher in the US, Ellie is most well-known for teaching pop, rock, soul, blues, and R&B. However, she also teaches “jazz”, legit jazz, classical, I-Pop, and more. In person in NYC and San Francisco, as well as via Skype, she works extensively with a lot of the Hong Kong Canto-Pop and Mando-Pop artists on material in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin as well as working on English and Korean language songs with K-Pop “idols” in South Korea. Most of her clients start as beginners with her – regardless of if they eventually sing for fun or for a living. Ellie bases her teachings on the fact that “positive reinforcement” (ie: reward) works with singers and “negative reinforcement” (ie: punishment) causes singers to close up and sing poorly (and takes time to reverse). This is a majour distinction between Ellie’s approach and the approaches many other places.
As part of her original training and then as a commitment to continuing professional education and ongoing research, Ellie has herself taken Alexander Technique and private singing lessons more or less consistently for more than 25 years to consolidate useful technique and approaches for various singing styles, mental blocks, and vocal problems. She’s also studied pop/rock songwriting, conducting, theory, jazz theory, classical and jazz piano, guitar, arranging, and upright bass.
As a performer, Ellie’s sold-out shows combining jazz in a cabaret-like settings taking her jazz combo into prominent medium-sized rock and metal clubs and venues, such as San Francisco’s Elbo Room and Broadway Studios, with some of the top jazz players has garnered fans from in and out of the jazz multiverse and pushed the boundaries of the genre.
Ellie sez: Every singer has a style – whether or not they are aware of it – and it’s important to teach to the whole person – the whole artist. Respect the stylistic and sometimes-quirky nature of artists. “The teacher should conform to the artist as opposed to the artist conforming to the teacher”