Norman Spivey

Baritone & Teacher of Singing

Norman Spivey headshot

Norman Spivey joined the Penn State School of Music faculty in 1992 and teaches singing and courses in voice pedagogy. An active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, he has served as national president, vice-president for NATS Workshops, Eastern Region governor, PA District governor, Allegheny Mountain Chapter president, and as a board member of the NATS Foundation. He was selected as a master teacher for the 2010 NATS Intern Program and also participated in the Intern Program as an intern (1994), as local coordinator (1997), and as national director (2017-18). His writings on teacher development and musical theatre singing have appeared in the NATS Journal of Singing. With longtime collaborator and Penn State Professor Emereitus Mary Saunders Barton he co-wrote the book Cross-Training in the Voice Studio: A Balancing Act (Plural Bublishing 2018).

Spivey received the Bachelor of Music degree from Southeastern Louisiana University (from which he received a 2012 Alumni Award), the Master of Music from the University of North Texas, and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. A Fulbright grant to Paris, where he worked with renowned baritones Gabriel Bacquier and Gérard Souzay, led to concert and opera engagements throughout France, as well as a tour of France and Canada as Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. While in France, he was awarded the Harriet Hale Woolley Award as artist-in-residence at the Fondation des Etats-Unis. He has sung Schubert’s Winterreise at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and performed the American premiere of Poulenc’s rediscovered Quatre Poèmes de Max Jacob. A more recent performance project, Écoute: pieces of Reynaldo Hahn, was an original one-man show on the life and music of the French composer that toured to scores of venues around the country.

Norman has been the single most influential person in my professional life since I arrived at Penn State. I cannot enumerate the many ways in which Norman’s generous and visionary spirit and have helped me.Mary Saunders-Barton

He has received fellowships from the Aspen Music Festival, the Académie Maurice Ravel, and the Institute for Advanced Vocal Studies in Paris, and is the recipient of the prestigious Van L. Lawrence Fellowship awarded jointly by The Voice Foundation and NATS. He was awarded the 2012 Penn State College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was invited to join the distinguished American Academy of Teachers of Singing in 2011.

American Academy of Teachers of Singing Norman Spivey's PSU School of Music webpage National Asssocation of Teachers of Singing