Ann Benson, '92 DMA
Voice classes are booming at Columbia College, and Ann Benson is a major key to their success.
Benson, who received her DMA in vocal performance from Carolina in 1992, teaches 21 private voice students each week and has given up teaching other classes to keep up with the increasing number of voice majors. One of her students recently won a full scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York.
“Everybody wants to be a voice major,” said Benson, a voice professor at Columbia College who, in her four years there, has won the Undergraduate Students' Choice Award for Teaching Excellence. “I wasn't sure I would love teaching, but now I can't imagine being without it.”
Although she calls herself “the most reluctant performer,” Benson, a soprano and now a mezzo-soprano, had a successful and impressive career as a solo artist. She made her New York operatic debut with the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center and her New York City recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. She also has performed with opera companies and with symphony orchestras around the country.
When Benson returned to her hometown of Columbia, she started work on her doctorate at Carolina, studying with Donald Gray. “I had wonderful teachers, and I enjoyed the students,” she said. “I enjoyed everything about it.”
Benson performed the role of Desiree in Opera at USC's production of A Little Night Music, directed by the program's director and childhood friend Ellen Douglas Schlaefer. “I loved the students and would love to work with Opera at USC again,” Benson said.
Vicki Bragin, '69 master's
When her husband, Joe, first suggested she enter an amateur piano competition, Vicki Bragin was a little insulted.
“I said, ‘What do you mean? I'm not an amateur—I am trained,’ ” Bragin said and laughed.
But she not only entered her first competition ever—she won. Competing with six finalists from a field of about 75, Bragin was a first-prize co-winner in the third Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, a competition for pianists 35 years or older who do not earn their principal living from piano performance or piano teaching. Bragin was a program director at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va., at the time.
Although she has a master's degree in chemistry and first came to America from her native Philippines to take graduate courses in chemistry, Bragin's first passion always has been the piano and music.
Bragin arrived at Carolina in the late 1960s when her husband was a post-doctoral fellow at the University. She earned a master's degree in music education and became, if her memory is correct, the University's first accompanist's assistant.
“I would play a recital on Friday and Saturday and another on Wednesday. I don't know how I did it,” Bragin said. “I guess when you are young, you do a lot of things. I accompanied the choir under the direction of Arpad Daraz and accompanied singers, violinists, and saxophonists. It was just wonderful.”
Bragin studied with John Williams and taught music theory and piano at Carolina after she completed her master's. “I loved the University of South Carolina and my experience there,” she said.
For Bragin, chemistry and music created a winning formula for success.
Betty-Ann Darby, '46
For 41 years, Betty-Ann Darby did the one thing she said she never would—teach public school music.
After graduating from Carolina in 1946 with a bachelor's in applied music and piano performance, Darby answered an ad to teach piano in a public school program in St. Matthews. The job paid $40 a month and allowed as many private piano students as she wanted.
“I told them I was well qualified to teach piano, but I did not know anything about classroom music,” Darby said. “Well, they hired me anyway, and within the first four weeks, I certainly knew I was born to teach classroom music.”
A Florence native, Darby stayed in St. Matthews two years and spent the other 39 teaching elementary music, junior and high school choral music, and acting as the first coordinator of music for Florence District 1.
Along the way, Darby turned to Carolina's fledgling music education department and its founder, Robert L. VanDoren, for help to get her teaching career going.
“Mr. VanDoren began the music education department my senior year,” Darby said. “He was my mentor in those first few years.”
Darby, who is a member of the S.C. Music Educator's Hall of Fame, was one of only four music majors to graduate in 1946, and the entire music department—not yet big enough to be a school—was housed on the third floor of Rutledge College.
The school has moved and grown over the years, but Darby never lost contact. Every summer, she attends the school's Southeastern Piano Festival, listening to young pianists practice and perform. She was on the first Board of Directors for the Friends of the School of Music and will go back on the board next year as historian.
“I have a tremendous pride in the University, but in particular the School of Music,” Darby said.
Connie Frigo, '05 DMA
Saxophonist Connie Frigo has found a harmonious balance between teaching and performing.
As an assistant professor of applied saxophone, Frigo has the job she always wanted, managing a studio of about 15 saxophone majors and coaching saxophone quartets weekly at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. As a performer, she plays baritone saxophone with the New Century Saxophone Quartet.
“A performing career goes hand-in-hand with teaching at a university because the university wants you out there touring, performing, recruiting, gaining a national reputation, and, hopefully, attracting students to your studio and university program,” Frigo said.
Frigo, who has been playing the saxophone since the seventh grade, is accustomed to touring. During her junior year at Ithaca College in New York, she auditioned for the U.S. Navy Band, and to her surprise, got the job.
“I went into boot camp the summer of my junior year and reported directly to the Navy Band in Washington, D.C., in August,” said Frigo, who for three years was the band's youngest member. “I finished up my undergraduate degree pretty unconventionally, but it was well worth the sacrifice of my senior year.”
But Frigo, who also studied in the Netherlands as a Fulbright Scholar, wouldn't trade the experience. “It was fantastic,” she said. “It defined me as a musician.”
Working with Carolina's former music dean Jamal Rossi, whom she had first met at Ithaca College, and saxophone professor Clifford Leaman at Carolina, Frigo developed the skills she uses every day as a professor.
“The teaching assistantships I was offered at Carolina as a doctoral student provided invaluable opportunities that prepared me for a university position,” Frigo said. “I taught saxophone, music appreciation, and ear training. I was the assistant to the Southern Exposure Contemporary Music Series directed by John Fitz Rogers and the assistant to musicology professor Julie Hubbard. All of these professors gave me invaluable mentoring on how to manage and handle classroom teaching.
“I can pick up the phone and call any one of the professors with whom I worked closest and still receive the best advice, insight, and support. And they can attest that I still really do call them!”
Scott Guinn, '01
Baritone Scott Guinn's introduction to opera might not have been as dramatic as some of the roles he now sings with the New York City Opera, but it was life altering.
He was sitting in Carolina's music library watching a video of Puccini's Turandot when he had “that clichéd moment and said, ‘That's what I want to do.’ I had never considered opera—never even seen an opera until I came to Carolina.”
After earning his bachelor's degree in music performance in 2001, Guinn got a contract with the New York City Opera by way of the Metropolitan Opera. Competing in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, a showcase for promising young singers from all over the country, he won the local competition in South Carolina in 2005 and then the Southeast Regional competition in Atlanta. He went on to New York for the national semi-finals.
“The experience at the Met was great,” Guinn said. “It had always been a goal of mine to sing on that stage or be on that stage—even if it was as a janitor.”
Guinn didn't advance past the semi-finals, but the New York City Opera noticed his talent, and his manager got him an audition with the company two weeks later. He made his official stage debut with the New York City Opera this past March as Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance and sang the role of Baron Douphol in La Traviata in April. He will sing another role next year.
Guinn's goal is to have a full-time singing career, and, once his career is established, to put down roots, maybe in Columbia.
“I fell in love with this city when I went to school,” said Guinn who was a student of long-time music professor Donald Gray.
Being in Columbia also would give Guinn the opportunity to give back to Carolina. “I want to help the University in any way I can because I got so much while I was there,” he said. “Dorothy Payne was dean when I was a student, and she used to always say that the School of Music is the best kept secret on the East Coast, and I believe it is.”
Cynthia Hanna, '06 master's
As one of six singers in the Virginia Opera Spectrum Young Artists Program, mezzo-soprano Cynthia Hanna sang for more than 185,000 elementary, middle, and high school students and got a good education about the life of an opera singer.
Most days she was up at 6 a.m., performed in two children's shows before lunch, and spent the afternoons in master classes and coaching sessions. After dinner, she rehearsed, sometimes until 10 p.m.
“Now factor in all of the traveling we did—sometimes a seven-hour drive to a town on the other side of Virginia—and it's obvious that you have to love what you do to survive this business,” said Hanna, who graduated from Carolina in 2006 with a master's degree in opera theatre.
Hanna's career got a boost this summer when she participated in the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. More than 800 performers auditioned, and Hanna was one of only 24 singers chosen for the 11-week training program.
Hanna commends her training at Carolina, especially her three mentors, Donald Gray, her master's voice teacher; Ellen Douglas Schlaefer, director of Opera at USC; and Lynn Kompass, an assistant professor of voice.
“I got a true ‘conservatory' training,” Hanna said. “I now have a solid vocal technique, musical insight, and the ability to adapt on stage—all of which were skills I was taught at Carolina.”
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