December 2010

The Kansas City Vocal Institute has once again had a very successful month and is looking forward to an exciting month of December to complete its first year running.  This month, we will briefly look at what has been happening recently, and we will give you a preview of things to come in 2011.

KCVI has seen incredible growth during the month of November on several fronts.  The Institute has been sponsoring several contests through musicedcharities.org which will award excellence in singing and in composition.  The participation in these contests has been high and we are excited to award several monetary prizes to the winners.  The semifinalists will be contacted privately, and the winners will be announced January 1, 2011 on www.musicedcharities.org and www.kcvocalinstitute.com.

The Institute has increased its advertising during the month which has spurred enrollment in voice lessons and will hopefully continue to provide more opportunities for music education in Kansas City.  A portion of every lesson paid for at the Institute goes toward scholarships and providing free music education for Kansas City children and families.

Another exciting step in this process has been our 2010 KCVI Charity Auction.  Many celebrities from around the world have donated and have created scholarships in their name.  In turn, many have donated items to be auctioned and 100% of what is earned from the auction will go to support their individual scholarships.  The auction began November 26 and will continue until all the items have been auctioned.  The auction is online at www.kcvocalinstitute.com/auction and the first auctions will end December 5.

There has been substantial news coverage of the auction including press releases, newspaper write-ups, blog entries, and twitter posts.  Several media outlets covering the auction are USA Today, KC Star, Newsday, the Examiner, and Dallas Morning News.  The coverage has been so extensive that our website traffic has octupled and our internet presence doubled all within one week.  According to Google, our site's online presence and coverage now extends to almost a half-million unique sites!  Keep in mind, that the organization is not even five months old.  This has far exceeded our expectations, has energized our creative spirit, and because of this we will surely continue to find avenues to support music education.

The Institute has also developed Holiday Gift Certificates to be purchased online at www.kcvocalinstitute.com/holiday.  These are great gifts for any musician, child, spouse, or friend who loves to sing.  Satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back.

Thank you for your support of the Kansas City Vocal Institute.  If you are interested in supporting the Kansas City Vocal Institute or any of our scholarships, you may donate through www.musicedcharities.org and click the yellow "donate" button at the bottom of the screen.  You may also visit our auction page at www.kcvocalinstitute.com/auction and bid on items to further help support our scholarships.

November 2010

The Kansas City Vocal Institute has had a very successful October.  The Institute has had increased enrollment, internet visibility, and donor contributions.  Much of this was unexpected because we anticipated enrollment to peak around the beginning of the school year.  Much of our internet exposure has been through press releases from events and new opportunities at the Institute.


In October, we began a new program of Online Voice Lessons.  These are very unique in that we are offering individual and personal lessons through online video submissions.  Besides KCVI, almost all of the online lessons offered on the internet are selling CDs or other software intended to help singers.  With our program, we are offering individual lessons at a very inexpensive price.  When a video is submitted to us, we give that video to a teacher who replies with a video response, directly applying individual music instruction over the internet.  This program is great for traveling professionals who want to remain connected with a voice instructor and for current voice students to remain connected to their private instructor between lessons.


New to the website is more information about our donors with their accomplishments.  Hopefully the Institute will be able to offer donors private pages to display statistically how they are helping the music community of Kansas City through their donations.  These pages will enable donors to see and hear from individual students who they are helping through their contributions and provide a more meaningful connection between the donor and scholarship recipient.  If you would like to see any specific elements within these donor sites, please send your ideas to sing@kcvocalinstitute.com.


Because of a decrease in demand, the Institute is not offering composition lessons, but we continue to offer voice, diction, theory, and online lessons and voice lessons for children with our Loud and Proud music class.
The Loud and Proud music class for elementary age children has had their first concert and the next session has begun.  The Institute is still offering outreach programs to area high schools.  And new in November will be a charity auction featuring items from many famous musicians and others from around the world.  All the items featured in the auction have been donated by individuals some of whom are Tony Award winners, Academy Award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and many more.  Some items include an autographed script from an episode of Law and Order, autographed music from Eric Whitacre, autographed film scores from Star Wars, Avatar, and Toy Story, autographed poetry from Maya Angelou, and autographed baton from world famous conductor Zubin Mehta, and autographed books, pictures, albums, and artwork from many others including American Idol winner David Cook, opera singer Marilyn Horne, and actress Angelina Jolie.  These items were all donated by these individuals and the proceeds will go to their individual scholarships through the Kansas City Vocal Institute providing free or greatly discounted music education for children and families in the Kansas City metro area.  We will be announcing dates for the auction next week and the information will be posted on this blog.  Please check back soon for more information.  This will be a great way to find holiday presents for your family and friends all the while supporting scholarships that will go to provide free music education for children and families in the Kansas City metro area.


Thank you for your interest in the Kansas City Vocal Institute. 

October 2010

The Kansas City Vocal Institute had a very active September. First, a look back at what the Institute accomplished last month, then a look ahead to the rest of October.

Most obviously, the Institute's website has been changing and improving. There are several new items including new page backgrounds of Kansas City and a scrolling news bar updated with all our new events. The newest information appears in red; so check back often to see what is going on at the Institute.

On the "about" page, there is more information about the Institute, the Teachers, and our Supporters. Those who provide the Institute with scholarships have earned a spot on our supporters page where their accomplishments are listed and soon will include more news about their involvement with KCVI.

On the "lessons" page, there are new links to scholarship and discount information for voice lessons, a downloadable brochure is available for Children's Classes, and a new Online Voice Lesson service has been added. The online service is very unique, because all you need to do is send a video of yourself singing privately or in a performance and we will provide expert analysis of your technique and performance for only $3! Other online sites only provide expensive self-help CDs and you will not receive personalized attention. This is great service for those who can only afford a few private lessons or have to travel long distances to their instructor's studio. Now students can have their private instructor give them check-up lessons online, get professional instruction, and save money.

The Institute has significantly expanded its community outreach especially through its services provided by the KCVI - Music Education Charities. KCVI now offers Public School Outreach services where Institute teachers have volunteered their time to go to area schools and teach free private lessons to students and provide free sheet music for them as well. The Institute is offering 3 visits for schools who are interested and will provide most any music education service the teachers need. Most of the teachers are responsible for the music education for several hundred students. Institute teachers are volunteering their time and efforts to help these school teachers in whatever ways they need most.

Also on the "Outreach" page, there is more information about scholarships. The Institute has already awarded several full scholarships (free lessons for a year). Those who donate to these scholarships will receive information about who is benefiting from their donations and will be able to see video and hear from those students as well. Later this month, the Music Education Charities will be debuting an innovative Muisc Adoption Program to make this a more efficient and beneficial donation program for both our donors and students. In the meantime, if you are interested in donating, please contact us today or simply donate through our PayPal site.

The Institute will also be sponsoring several events found on the "Events" page. The Institute is planning to host a Fall Rep Session where students, especially those who were helped in outreach programs, can come and receive a free lesson and free repertoire for their spring music contests and festivals as well as for college and summer program auditions. In the Spring, KCVI will host an event that will provide more free instruction prior to the spring contests as well as provide scholarship and audition information from representatives from area Colleges, Universities, and other music programs. Locations, dates, and times for these events are still being negotiated and will be announced soon.

The payment process has been simplified even further providing separate Enrollment and Payment pages. Those receiving scholarships and discounts receive private pages on the charity site with login IDs and passwords to help manage this process.

You can now follow KCVI on Myspace. The Institute's internet presence has been increasing, and after only several months; KCVI ranks 1st in several search categories on Google. Google estimates that KCVI has added about 27,000 new related sites in September on a simple search for "Kansas City Vocal Institute" bringing the search total to just under a quarter million sites! Hopefully, this trend continues, and this taps into what the Institute is planning for October.

The future is very bright for KCVI. Several important steps lay right ahead and news is forthcoming on these milestones. The Kansas City Vocal Institute should become officially incorporated within the next few weeks. With that, more emphasis will be given to web presence and providing online services for donors, children in the public schools, and web users around the world. Another important area will be with the school children of the Kansas City area. The outreach programs will continue and hopefully encourage more students to take lessons who are interested in music outside of the classical genre. Children who are interested in pop, rock, country, blues, jazz, etc. all should receive attention in those fields and the Institute will be making new initiatives to provide them with education in those fields.

Follow us on Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. Thank you for your support of the Kansas City Vocal Institute.

September 2010

August has been an incredible month for the Kansas City Vocal Institute. Our charity site is going strong and on the way to becoming an official non-profit organization. Our web presence is growing exponentially. Google now links "Kansas City Vocal Institute" to around 221,000 sites. In addition to our increased advertising, press coverage, and discount drives, the Kansas City Vocal Institute has been working to create scholarships provided by private individuals.

Currently, we have scholarship donors who have been awarded prestigious honors including the Pulitzer Prize, and I have been asking them to donate items to auction. The money received will go directly towards their scholarship. Hopefully, this will be up and running by next month through our charity site and our online charity event sponsored by the Kansas City Lyric Opera called Sing My Song.

The Kansas City Vocal Institute has received much attention from area teachers, performers, and educators. We are working to provide services for the Kansas City area musicians with teaching and job opportunities. If the Institute continues to garner support, we hope to provide more opportunities to these musicians in the coming months.

KCVI also has updated enrollment and payment sites to make the process simpler and more secure. We are also offering more scholarship opportunities as well as discounts through several media and internet sources. And we are adding classes to the list of services we offer.

The first class we are offering is called Loud and Proud and is taught by Dr. Anne Walker-Willyard. Loud and Proud is a group voice class for Elementary age children. It is divided into K-3 and 4-6 classes and meets after school and in the evenings at Faith Lutheran Church in Prairie Village. Each session will last 6 weeks and conclude with a concert. This is very exciting for all of us especially because we were able to keep it very affordable and provide financial aid to families in need as well.

You can now follow us on myspace and we continually post discounts on all of our media platforms, so please visit www.kcvocalinstitute.com/Follow to catch up on everything we are offering.

Stay tuned for more exciting news and plans including a Spring Golf Tournament, 2011 Charity Gala Concert, and our Charity Auctions to begin soon featuring items from some of the world's most influential people.

Kansas City Vocal Institute

Welcome!

The Kansas City Vocal Institute Magazine is here to give monthly updates of what we are doing at the Kansas City Vocal Institute. We launched a new site in June and have many new projects to update you on including new classes, our teacher/tutor search campaign, our non-profit scholarship fundraising campaign, and new information on how area businesses are working with us.

KCVI is currently offering voice lessons and tutoring for diction, composing, and music theory. And you can now enroll and pay online!

We also began a teacher and tutor search. KCVI currently has 17 studios but we need more! If you are interested in working with KCVI, please send your resume by email to kcvocalinstitute@gmail.com. Click the "Teach" button on our website for more information about working with us. We will create a studio webpage for you and your students to use where you can upload audio and video, and your students will be able to pay for their lessons online.

KCVI is currently raising funds along with the Kansas City Lyric Opera to give scholarships to underprivileged children and families in the Kansas City Metro Area. These give children full tuition for the year in any of the lessons we offer. We have been working with several non-profit organizations including ACHT (American Cultural Heritage Trust), FOCUS (Fusion of Creative Arts and Sound) and the Kansas City Lyric Opera to help provide these services and scholarships. We need your help - please visit the KCVI Music Education Charity website for more details about how you can help at www.musicedcharities.org.

KCVI and the Kansas City Lyric Opera will be running a scholarship campaign from September 1, 2010 through September 30, 2010 called "Sing My Song". The money contributed in the scholarship campaign will go directly to providing underprivileged students free music lessons and to the Kansas City Lyric Opera's educational programs.

In addition, we are trying to work with area businesses to provide as many free music services to the community as possible. As I mentioned earlier, the Kansas City Lyric Opera has agreed to work with us in raising donations for the KCVI Music Education Charities. Studio City KC has also expressed interest in helping us. Johnson County Community College, Kansas City Kansas Community College, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City have offered some of their facilities for us to use. We are hoping for the future help of the Metropolitan Community College.

KCVI is currently pursuing plans for the future involvement of the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, Harriman-Jewell Recital Series, Kemper Art Museum, Nielsen-Atkins Art Museum, and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. These are all very important parts of the local arts community. We hope to provide our business and non-profit partners with help as well as concert and special event opportunities for our donors. Please stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for your interest in the Kansas City Vocal Institute. We hope you can be a part of our organization.

Bryan Pinkall

www.kcvocalinstitute.com