Teacher Profile: Donnie Ward
About Donnie Ward
Donnie is a vocalist, pianist, and drummer who studied classical voice performance at Stetson University. He was born and raised in Ocean City, Maryland before moving down to Florida at the age of five. Donnie grew up in a family of musicians and artists and has always had a love for music.
Donnie has performed in dozens of roles over the course of his performing career and performed in many different genres, styles, and languages. With roles such as Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Schaunard (La Bohéme), and Gianni Schicchi (Gianni Schicchi) under his belt he is a seasoned live performer. He has performed in ensembles all over the east coast, from Florida to New York and all the states in between. He has performed art songs, arias, and duets from composers such as Händel , Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, Camille Saint-Saëns, Vincenzo Bellini and many more. Donnie has competed at the state and regional levels with a very successful record in the competitive scene.
Donnie has been teaching since 2019. He has worked with all ages and has experience instructing a large range of skill levels. Donnie believes that a student is capable of far more than they might expect of themselves. He is set on teaching in a fun, upbeat, and productive lesson style with an emphasis on the stylings and genres you are interested in. With a wide array of musical styles under his belt, he is prepared for most musical adventures in the lesson room. The lesson room will be geared towards evolving the student into an expressive and technical musician.
He studied under Professor Russell Franks as well as Dr. Michael Foster at Stetson University for applied voice instruction. He also studied under Dr. Timothy Peter and Dr. Sandra Peter for choral ensembles and conducting. His vast knowledge of vocal pedagogy and diction training was grown under Dr. Chadley Ballantyne and Dr. Karen Coker Merritt over his career at Stetson. He has studied and performed in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Latin, and Norwegian.