Dr. Ann Burritt Nagell is committed to the development of musical potential in the emerging professional singer. She has coached many talented students toward placement in America's leading conservatories and universities. Singers working in collaboration with Ann have found career opportunities in performance at The Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and in internationally renowned opera houses in Europe.
Dr. Nagell holds doctoral and master’s degrees in Solo Piano with Emphasis in Collaboration from Arizona State University where she served as Faculty Associate and the Assistant Coordinator of Piano Accompanying. A graduate of Ithaca College with a bachelor’s degree in music education with emphases in harpsichord and piano performance, Ann was the first Staff Accompanist for Ithaca College’s School of Music. She has taught courses in solo piano, collaborative piano, vocal coaching, and French diction at Grand Canyon University and in the Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona. She has concertized, coached, and given master classes throughout the US and in England, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, and Norway.
Dr. Nagell served as principal opera coach and performance pianist for “Flagstaff in Fidenza” Italy. She studied and performed French and German Art Song at the Geneva Conservatory in Geneva, Switzerland. Ann performed in master classes and recitals at the Cleveland Institute’s renowned Art Song Festivals. She performed the solo piano and vocal music of Edvard Grieg in concerts in Norway. She served as the French Aria Specialist at the Taos Opera Institute.
Dr. Nagell’s teachers and mentors include Frank Eldridge, E. Leslie Bennett, Lois McLeod, John Metz, Robert Hamilton, Rayna Barroll Aschaffenburg, Dalton Baldwin, and Eckart Sellheim. She has performed in master classes with Judith Raskin, Phyliss Curtin, Jan DeGaetani, Donald Gramm, Martin Isepp, Richard Boldrey, Gérard Souzay, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Elizabeth Söderstrom, Warren Jones, Maureen Forrester, Thomas Muraco, Robert Hale, Ricky Ian Gordan, and Josefien Stoppelenburg, among others. Ann has worked with Eastman School of music composer, Samuel Adler, to study and perform the majority of his works for voice and piano. Dr. Nagell’s dissertation research centered on the late song cycles of Gabriel Fauré, from a performer’s perspective.
She currently performs with Canticum Novum, a 24-voice chamber choir from Phoenix, Arizona, committed to the preservation and performance of liturgical choral music for sacred spaces. Recently, she performed for the Arizona Bach Festival, the music of W.F. Bach and J.C. Bach for harpsichord duo. Ann is a Founding Board Director for the Arizona Piano Institute, having served as President of its Board of Directors since its inception in 2013.