Prefer to read instead of listen? Here’s the longer version of what we talked about:

Kristy Errera-Solomon is the go-to voice teacher for many of my performer friends, is co-owner and founder of Spotlight Music and Theatre Academy, runs her own private studio, is on the voice faculty for Bridgewater State University. She’s a very accomplished voice coach!

Her personality is fun, casual, and includes lots of laughing and hard work in her lessons. She allows her students to bare their soul as well as working on their voice.

“The vocal instrument – it only works really well when everything is free.”

She’s learned from her past teachers not to dictate, but to guide and also make sure her students enjoy what they’re working on as well.

She grew up in Brooklyn and was always singing somewhere. She sang Whitney Houston songs and Madonna onstage when she was young, loved instruments and musical theatre.

She went to college for classical voice and sang as an opera singer for a little bit, but then a vocal injury stopped her career in its tracks.

At that point, she’d always wanted to teach as well, so she got her masters in vocal pedagogy to learn the science of how the voice works. And that’s how she came to be a teacher.

“The older I get, the happier I am that I chose this path.”

To have her opera career taken away was really devastating. But if she had followed that path, she wouldn’t have had her wonderful husband, kids, and the life she has now. She wonders if she could have lived paycheck to paycheck and done many shows a week.

She started teaching and felt horrified – she studied the vocal exercises before each lesson and practiced the piano sheet music parts to make sure she knew what she was doing. Being an opera singer and then moving into pop and theatre, it’s a very different style. She realized that she didn’t have to actually sing in those styles herself, just be able to teach others how to. She doubted herself a bit and it was frightening starting out!

Many vocal teachers don’t teach pop or theatre because it seems too different to what they know (like teaching a different instrument). She learned the styles, and it took years for her to feel comfortable singing in this way herself.

Kristy had a private studio out of her home which was growing larger and larger, then hired a second teacher. Then the second teacher filled up too. She had the thought about developing a school because they were sending students elsewhere for dance, theatre, and other things. Why not keep them around and teach all of those things?

She met her co-founder (choreographer and Broadway performer Erin Verina) and they decided to open a music and theatre school together. They’re both Scituate moms and their town didn’t have a place to learn all of those things in the same building.

Great singing is someone who tells a great story. In her lectures, she talks about Louis Armstrong, and how his voice isn’t technically great, but we still call him a great singer. Madonna’s voice isn’t great, but her performing is unbelievable.

“I think in all of it, both performing and singing, is the storytelling. A good musical theatre performer, a good actor, bares their soul. They tell a story. And they’re good listeners. They listen to what’s being thrown back at them, and they give honest performances.”

She teaches technique, and then she throws it away and teaches students to connect to the story. Because she’s close to her students, she helps them tap into personal parts of their life to connect feeling to their singing. And then they sing better because they’re connecting with their hearts and the technique comes through their body and muscle memory. It takes time to get people to believe that it’s easier to sing by getting out of their head and freeing themselves.

“I can’t do what I used to do vocally. And so my self-esteem isn’t great for performing. I need to work through that myself.”

She pushes her students but has a harder time pushing herself. There’s the pressure to be perfect that she puts on herself. If she got out and performed more, that lack of confidence probably would get better. As her kids get older she might get some freedom back to do that.

“The best way to learn technique is to teach technique.”

She has to dig into her toolbox of vocal exercises and techniques to see what works with her students, and that teaches her more and more about what works. Sometimes Kristy has to show her students how to “act” the songs.

“I’m like the proud mama bear. I go to every show, every production. I’m such an empath. I’m just so excited for them. It’s their success. Success is seeing them succeed.”

Teaching is like being a mom! Watching the students succeed and seeing them accomplish what they wanted to do.

Her husband is an accomplished percussion pedagogy teacher and also works with composers. She thinks that’s super successful. Others ask why he doesn’t play with an orchestra, but he just wants to teach.

She does have students who only want to be on Broadway, but she has other students who just want to be able to write a song and play their guitar at a family reunion. There’s the gamit. Some students get their degrees but then come home and work locally.

She and her co-founder have a vast network of people who are very successful and high profile.

“The best part about bringing bigger names to my students is allowing them to see that they’re just people. And they just happened to work really hard at what they do and also be very kind. Most of them are kind people who’ve made the connections to get as far as they’ve gotten.”

She was at Tanglewood once with her kids and was right next to John Williams, but her kids weren’t interested! They’ve been around it so much, it doesn’t faze them. Her students get to meet and also work with many successful and famous people. She hopes their students stay real and don’t get spoiled, but it’s cool to see them get excited.

The first couple years of her first kid, she took a year and a half off to be a mom, but that wasn’t her energy. She wanted more work. With each kid (now she has 3!), she’s getting a little worried because she doesn’t know how to be there and support all of her kids on nights and weekends when she is usually teaching. Her job isn’t a 9-to-5, it’s a juggle.

What your kids want to do isn’t really up to you, so you do what they want. But there’s mom guilt with her teaching job, because she’s also a mom to the students in her studio as well as her own kids. She doesn’t know how to shut it off.

Every year she changes her jobs and her schedule to fit her family’s life. Often in a family, there’s usually one person in the family who sort of keeps their schedule the way it was before kids, and one who has to constantly shift to accommodate them.

“Every year shifts, every month shifts, every week shifts.”

“None of it’s bad, it’s just finding that balance. There’s tears because you’re tired, you missed that baseball game and you really wanted to be there. I think moms carry a lot of guilt, but we do make it work. Every day we wake up and we have a plan.The plan never goes the way it’s supposed to go. But we adapt, and we keep going.”

She would get bored if that chaos didn’t exist!

Because she teaches all day, she usually doesn’t choose to do it on her own time. But she gets joy watching movies on the couch, going to shows with her family, etc. She fills that creative part of herself in other ways. She does art projects with her four-year-old, interior decorating, and more.

“Take any moment you can to fill it.”

Kristy hopes to find more time for herself, find physical wellness with a trainer, strengthen her body and feel strong, and through Spotlight, be known as the place to go to feel like family and get the best training and be part of a community.

“Just go for it. Learn as much as you can. Take every opportunity that you can. My students that succeed are the ones that do that.”

Her successful students watch the YouTube lessons, go into summer programs to learn, listen to podcasts, audition, etc. Her pet peeve is when people don’t do the work. Watch people and learn and try it. And if you don’t want to perform, then just listen.

“Expose yourself to as much as you can. Don’t be afraid. Do it for yourself.”

She references a Kurt Vonnegut quote about getting as much as you can about life while you can. (Read the full story here!)