Clara Salomon

      Founder & Director
​                of the
​             Vocal Academy of Orvieto​

Soprano, professor of voice, artistic director.
From 2020 onward, retreats related to trauma healing
​and use of the voice, somatic reintegration, and detox!!

Click HERE to visit website for somatic, detox, and healing retreats across Europe and the USA.  

Clicca sulla bandiera per continuare in Italiano, 

Versione Italiana

Clara currently resides between Chicago and Bodrum, Turkey, where she responded to the persistent Italian lockdowns by moving her international music festival and training academy (formerly called the Vocal Academy of Orvieto) to perform throughout July of 2021. In the same summer she was invited to perform in a concert series with Bodrum's summer festival orchestra, as well as to sing in a concert with Izmir Opera soloists.
 
​In 2020 most notably she was invited to premiere the works of new composers near to Chiusi-Chianciano Terme in Tuscany, as well as to adjudicate their international competition. 

​Beginning in 2018 when Clara first went to Orvieto to teach for the University of Arizona, she began collaborating with a number of regional Italian festivals, Additionally, she sang in concerts alongside other faculty and students from the University of Arizona in the city palace of Orvieto,

In 2017 she performed the roles of Female Chorus in Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and Madame Lidoine in The Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francois Poulenc, and also prepared the role of Fiordiligi from Così fan' tutte ​and excerpts from Tosca to sing with an opera festival in Sicily.  While living in Tucson, Arizona,  she frequently performed with Emily Chao, violin, of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and Loren Mitchell, collaborative pianist of the University of Arizona, in the Tucson Desert Camerata, a chamber trio specialized in arrangements and orchestral reductions of vocal music from the Baroque period through the present day.

​Formerly, she has performed in solo recitals, chamber ensembles, and operas, overseas in Italy, Germany, Israel, Jamaica, and Trinidad.  While visiting Chicago, she took part in a concert style presentation of scenes from the roles of Mignon (Thomas) and Micaela,  (Carmen, Bizet) in a historic concert venue on the south side in 2012.  Earlier in 2011 she received a foreign grant to become an artist-resident of Germany with a visa for performance and teaching.  Other notable engagements have included solo vocal concerts with pianists from the International Piano Academy in the Lake Como region of Italy, a recording of Gonoud's Ave Maria made with a Milanese company for commercial use, multiple roles in the Operafestival di Roma under Maestro Stefano Vignati, the premier of a liturgical work for choir and soloist with Tony winning tenor Alberto Mizrahi, and the position of soloist and choir director for St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Silicon Valley, for which she performed many cantatas and other liturgical works.  She also has a standing invitation to return to Kingston, Jamaica, where she performed a solo recital for members of the European Union in the Blue Mountain palace of Kenny Benjamin.
​
Her undergraduate musical education was completed at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, during which time she was extended an invitation to attend the University of Utah.  She went on to earn her Master of Music in performance at the University of Utah under full scholarship and stipend, and completed another master’s degree in Italian literature at Stanford University with scholarships and grants awarded for continued vocal study, performance, and teaching in the USA and abroad.

​More recently she completed a doctoral qualifying recital at the University of Arizona, for which she also taught multiple courses overseas. She also enthusiastically holds certificates from the Optimum Health Institute of San Diego and another for teaching Feldenkrais mat classes, and has pursued additional training in many forms of fasting, conscious eating, meditation, and dance.

Scroll down for retreat information

*****
...for information on Clara's latest teaching endeavours in wellness centers, yoga retreats, health spas. conservatories, and universities. Standard retreats explore the freeing up of the body, release of muscular restrictions and habit patterns, and an exploration of the link between how we hold ourselves, our emotions, and our ability to be truly "authentic" and present.

For these or other on-demand, weekend, week-long, and 10-day vocal intensives for yourself or you and a small group of musicians (or athletes, dancers, or any other), please visit the website to learn more about the applications of Feldenkrais, yogic breathing techniques, and other methods to help "reset" vocal technique and allow for an ever more refined connection to the voice.