Lyric soprano Barbara Steinhaus has joined the faculty at Brenau University in a new position as professor of music and director of the music program with a specialization in vocal performance. 

Steinhaus, who has appeared in performances on the Brenau stage, for the past 10 years has been associate professor at Piedmont College teaching applied voice at graduate and undergraduate levels. She joins a faculty group that includes Brenau International Opera Center Director William Fred Scott, who for three decades prior to coming to Brenau was conductor and director of professional opera companies and orchestras in Boston and Atlanta; pianist/conductor Michelle Roueché, professor of music and choral director, who has performed professionally since age 12; and Assistant Professor of Music Priscilla Jefcoat, a piano performance and music theory specialist has played many recitals throughout the region, as soloist and with her husband and duet partner, Keith Jefcoat. 

“This is an exciting time of growth in Brenau’s music program,” said Brenau University Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities Andrea Croce Birch.  “Dr. Steinhaus is a fabulous addition to our outstanding music faculty. Not only is she an accomplished performer with a glorious voice, but also she has a gift for teaching and sharing her wealth of knowledge and experience with students who are themselves on the way to becoming great performers and teachers.” 

Steinhaus earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Georgia, a Master of Music from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and a Bachelor of Music from Georgia State University. Along her way coaches and conductors with whom she has performed include Scott; the legendary concert baritone William Warfield; contralto and famed music educator Florence Kopleff; and vocal coach and Metropolitan Opera Assistant Conductor Joan Dornemann. 

In addition to numerous awards and publications, Steinhaus has performed in the United States and Europe. 

As a music educator, Steinhaus is renowned for employing arguably unconventional methods for teaching budding vocalists, employing such teaching aids as a spectrographic real-time imaging computer program to the very “low-tech” hula hoop to help students learn hard-taught disciplines of breath and body control while they sing – and to have a little fun in the process. 

Her style, however, is well suited to Brenau’s new cross-discipline “four portals of learning” liberal arts curriculum, Birch said, because Steinhaus attempts to nudge students from their comfort zones and use their imaginations while developing musical skills. 

“My responsibilities as a vocal teacher demand that I coax students’ personalities to step forward and ignite their imaginations so they can communicate worthwhile messages to their listeners,” said Steinhaus. “I encourage them to use their own experiences as yeasty resources for expression in their singing, but also to look outside their own experiences.” 

For example, she encourages students to add black spiritual art songs to their repertoire because these works of art, performed around the world under many circumstances, are “documents of American history, struggles and victories.” The works offer voice students “an enriched and immediate relationship with both American history and their global community.”