Victoria Schwartzman
Vocal Coach - Opera
Teaching Philosophy
In my journey as an educator, spanning over two decades, I’ve had the profound privilege of guiding singers of diverse skill levels toward their individual musical aspirations. For me, teaching is an intensely personal endeavor, where understanding the unique abilities, strengths, and needs of a student is paramount. By exploring compositional periods and styles, understanding the text, and finding the freedom to express their musical conviction, we pave the way for their artistic growth.
I believe that an essential element of intuitive understanding is necessary in order to help another person progress. There is also a delicate equilibrium between nurturing new skills, finding efficient work tools, and fostering artistic freedom. None can work in isolation.
I regularly work as a vocal coach, a piano teacher, and a Chamber Music coach. All of these roles are distinct in their structure and focus, but in each, the final goal is the same: to help each student broaden and deepen musical understanding and develop the personal tools necessary to authentically realize musical and compositional visions.
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Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Victoria Schwartzman (formerly Mazin) performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician. Victoria has appeared with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra chamber players, at Bard Music Festival, at the Music Mountain Festival, in the New York Philharmonic Ensembles series at Merkin Hall, at Summit Music Festival, at Bargemusic, in the Gessner- Schocken concert series in Cambridge, WMP Concert Hall, and the Nicolas Roerich Museum concert series in New York City. As a member of the Yanvar Trio, she was a prizewinner in the Val-Tidone Chamber Music Competition and a finalist in the Zinotti International Chamber Music Competition, both in Italy.
After graduating from Jerusalem Conservatory, Victoria continued her education at the Longy School of Music and New England Conservatory. While pursuing various degrees in solo and chamber music performance, she was selected to perform in masterclasses given by Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, and Richard Goode, among others. Her principal teachers include Irina Kivaiko, Issak Kossov, Victor Rosenbaum, Sally Pinkas, Eda Shlyam, and Eteri Andjaparidze.
As a soloist with orchestra, Victoria has performed with the Jerusalem Chamber Orchestra, the Longy School of Music Chamber Orchestra, and the Riverside Orchestra. She has performed at the Quartet Program in Pennsylvania and participated in the Tel-Hai International Piano Festival in Israel and the Lyrica Chamber Music Festival in New Jersey. Also active in the field of opera and art song, Victoria was a vocal coach and accompanist at the Boston Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Bard Music Festival, the Brevard Music Center, the Westchester Summer Vocal Institute, and the American Institute of Musical Studies Festival in Graz, Austria.
Victoria is as committed to performance as she is to education. She has given a master’s class in Russian vocal repertoire at Queens College, NY. She is on the coaching faculty in the Vocal Department at Montclair State University and Long Island University Post, and on the piano faculty at the Bard College Preparatory Division.