Aimée Birnbaum is a music and classics teacher in the Boston area. As a soprano in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, she has performed at Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, and Carnegie Hall and has worked with conductors including Kurt Masur, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, and Keith Lockhart. She is a two time recipient of Brandeis University’s Jaqueline Foster Award in Music for excellence in vocal performance.
Aimée has worked with students ranging in age from preschool to high school. She advocates early exposure to both music and language, and emphasizes the strong link between the two in her teaching. She uses dance, rhythm games, and word play to instill a physical connection to music, especially with her younger students.
Aimée holds a Bachelor’s Degree in both Music and Classical Studies from Brandeis University. Aimée is very excited to be joining the team at NEMPAC and is thrilled to be sharing her love of music with the students at the Eliot School!
Karen Shea, Yoga Instructor, Verve Yoga Co-Creator – Karen is a certified Mind-Body Yoga Instructor. She is a graduate of the YOGAspirit Studios and Healing Center teacher-training program and is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) through Yoga Alliance. In addition, she has successfully completed a course in Foundations to Energy Healing. This includes Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Vibrational Touch and Energetic approaches. In 2004 she completed “Color Me Yoga for Children Teacher Training” and has been teaching her VerveKids Yoga class ever since! Karen also offers whole food nutritional cleanses and her passions include her family, travel, food, urban farming and vibrant health!
Alexandra Dietrich has taught voice for the past seven years, first in Maine, and now in Massachusetts. She joined the NEMPAC faculty in the fall of 2011, teaching the musical theatre troupe as their music director for productions of “The Wizard of Oz”, “Annie”, and “Alice in Wonderland”. Since then, she has taught acting and voice for the past two summer camps, most recently music directing their fantastic week of staging and performing “Peter Pan”. She has also conducted the middle school choir at the Eliot School and St. John School Honors Choir. Recently, she led a R.O.C.K.S. presentation on the Prado discussing “The American Songbook”, to children ranging from 5-12 years in age.
Alexandra is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine, where she earned her Bachelor’s of Music in Music Performance and Music Education, studying choral and orchestral conducting under Dr. Robert Russell and Dr. Peter Martin, respectively. After moving to Massachusetts, she attended the Longy School of Music for her Graduate Performance Degree in Opera. She is an active performer and singer in the New England area, and regularly appears with local opera companies and orchestras.
Susan Davies, soprano, joined the NEMPAC team in the fall of 2014. After graduating from Ithaca College with a BM in Vocal Performance, she moved to Vienna, Austria, where she studied voice and taught Early Childhood Music Education at an English-speaking music school. An advocate of early exposure to music and language, she incorporates songs, movement, rhythm, stories, and note reading into her classes.
Susan currently teaches voice and piano, as well as early childhood music, and consistently works with musicians of all ages and ability levels. She has strong classical, choral, and musical theater backgrounds and performed with the Ithaca College Women’s Chorale and Chorus for four years. Major works include Beethoven Symphony No. 9 and Haydn’s Creation.
In 2012 Susan spent a semester studying in Vienna, where she was invited to join the IES Music Performance Workshop and perform several chamber works and opera scenes. In the past five years alone, she has performed solo recitals and sung in master classes with Johanna Meier, Zach James, and Gregory Ruffer.
