Hello, I'm Valerie D.

Valerie is a working singer and music instructor. She holds 2 degrees in voice performance: MM from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and BM from Westminster Choir College. In 2023 Valerie received the Polish American Arts Association Scholarship for her study and promotion of Polish diction and art song. Valerie empowers students to be independent and inquisitive artists. She believes a strong foundation of music literacy and consistent practice and experimentation allows students to prove to themselves that they can do hard things! The goal is never perfect performance, but rather to achieve gradual progress towards mastery through perseverance and curiosity. Valerie also makes this process fun to develop internal motivation to practice and exercise creativity! This includes activities like songwriting to review music literacy, ear training games, and acting exercises. Valerie encourages students to pursue their favorite repertoire, by assigning songs from their favorite pop artists to learn chords or technique, as well as introduces unfamiliar genre’s to broaden their musical pallet and skills. You can learn more about Valerie on her website: https://www.valeriedzielski.com/