Our goal is to provide the best possible musical training and experience in a safe, challenging, inspiring environment. Our team can provide everything a vocal student requires to reach their individual goals as a singer, and and as a performer if that is a direction they choose to pursue.
david macAdam
vocal teacher & Performance Instructor
As a busy, successful voice teacher & coach in Ottawa, David emphasizes healthy and effective vocal production for all singing styles from musical theatre & popular to classical & opera. His students consistently excel in competitions & festivals at the local, provincial, national & international levels, while many younger students do RCM Exams and/or attend one of the local performing arts high schools. Students have performed locally in concert in all genres, and on stage with many organizations, including Orpheus Musical Theatre Society, the Carleton & UofO Musical Theatre Societies, Opera Lyra Ottawa, & Chamberfest Ottawa, with some advancing to professional careers in opera, musical theatre and popular styles in Canada, the United States and internationally.
OVA students benefit from David’s long experience with internationally acclaimed artists, directors, and conductors on the stages of North America.For students who choose to pursue music in university, David is well-versed in the application & audition process, and for those who wish to attend university in Ottawa, he is also an Associate Performance Instructor at Carleton University, where he can carry students past high school & guide them to successful completion of a Bachelor of Music degree. At Carleton he works with students in Musical Theatre, Classical, and Popular Voice, and has assisted students in the Singer-Songwriter program. Students have gone on to further their training & education at some of the foremost universities, most of the time with scholarships and/or grant support. [For a partial listing of schools & programs, see the Gallery page].
David has also taken on clients with vocal cords damaged from incorrect use of the voice, and working with colleagues in medicine & speech language pathology has helped them to successfully correct their issues and get back to healthy singing.
An alumnus of the State University of New York at Buffalo, David holds Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Music degrees in Vocal Performance, both with honors. His educational background includes training in all areas pertaining to the lyric stage: vocal performance, dance, acting, directing, stage management, and technical areas. As a student, he also participated in master classes conducted by such luminaries as Gérard Souzay, Elly Ameling, Dalton Baldwin, Margaret Harshaw, and Maureen Forrester. He has often been heard in opera, recital & concert, locally & abroad, and broadcast live on CBC Radio & stations in the US.
Joanne Moorcroft
Pianist - Vocal Coach (Classical)
Joanne holds both a Master of Music in Accompanying & Chamber Music from the University of Western Ontario & a Bachelor of Music from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her teachers have included John Paul Bracey (UWO), John York, (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London), and Maureen Volk & Kristina Szutor (MUN). She has performed in masterclasses with David Lutz, Dalton Baldwin, Antonin Kubalek & André Laplante, and chamber music coachings with Ronald Turini. Joanne has been heard in chamber recitals throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Quebec & the Yukon.
Teaching positions have included Yukon Music Camp, Performing Arts Camp (Kittiwake Dance Theatre, St. John’s, NF), & Eastern Music Camp (Mount Pearl, NL). She has worked with KW Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, Huron Country Playhouse & the Stratford Festival. Since making Ottawa her home Joanne has been working as a freelance accompanist & coach, is collaborative pianist with the Harmonia Choir of Ottawa, and has worked with various choirs throughout the city.
Larry Tarof
Pianist - vocal coach (Broadway)
Larry Tarof ("Dr. L") is an Ottawa, Canada based musician with a loyal following who enjoys a reputation for more than a quarter century of outstanding pop/musical theater arrangements, choral arrangements, live performances, and original compositions. He has appeared live hundreds of times, gigs frequently as a jazz/cocktail pianist, and is kept quite busy accompanying/coaching musical theater. His growing body of original works (100+) includes jazz, musical theatre, pop/rock and sacred music. Within Ottawa's two largest synagogues, he runs a religious school music program and appears (vocals, guitar and piano) every Friday as Kabbalat Shabbat soloist at Temple Israel, and has directed multiple choirs and a Klezmer band at Agudath Israel.
At the studio, he has produced many demos, hundreds of backup tracks, countless arrangements and six fully produced full-length CDs to date. As pianist/composer, Larry is delighted at the radio play and reviews for his 2012 CD "C is for Cosmopolitan" featuring all-original compositions, and for the 2011 staging of Olympus the Musical, an all-original musical collaboration with Jenny Tarof. Music runs in the family: his son Daniel appears on guitar in "Fearless" (2005) and "Shneur" (2008) and he collaborated on both "Fearless" and "Olympus the Musical" with daughter Jenny. He co-founded "11 note chords", which brought the "Piano playlist" app to the market (2012-2016). "Dr. L" was profiled in 2005 on CJOH-TV's popular "CJOH-TV Regional Contact" and has also appeared at other times on television in Ottawa. He is also presently the MD/accompanist for the Carleton University Musical TheatreEnsemble.
