NICKY SCHRIRE

Nicky is an educator with over ten years of teaching experience in various contexts including private vocal instruction, workshops and master classes. She has worked with musicians at high school level as well as tertiary students at the Newpark Music School in Dublin and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Nicky was a voice instructor at the 2012 Standard Bank Youth Jazz Festival in Grahamstown, and she compiled and delivered a range of music education presentations for the Manhattan School of Music's Distance Learning Programme while living in New York. In 2016 she was the vocal instructor on faculty alongside educator and author Dan Haerle at Tshwane University of Technology's Summer Jazz Workshop in Pretoria. 

Nicky was a lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the Jazz Department for four years (2016-2019), during which time she taught improvisation, jazz ear training, jazz ensemble, music business skills, and gave private voice instruction. In 2018 she was acting head of the Jazz Voice Department. Her students have been accepted to study at the New England Conservatory, and have won awards locally as well as advanced to post-graduate studies.

Nicky served as an adjudicator for the 2015 SAMRO Overseas Scholarship Competition and the 2015 UNISA National Voice Competition. She has taught numerous workshops and master classes for the South African Association for Jazz Education (SAJE) as well as being part of their "Sisters In Sound" mentorship project, which aimed to encourage and promote the participation of young women in the art of jazz both educationally and professionally.

In 2022, Nicky joined the faculty at the University of Toronto, teaching jazz vocalists in the Jazz Studies department.

She has a BMus from the University of Cape Town and a MMus from the Manhattan School of Music. She is certified Level 1 in Somatic Voice Work™, The LoVetri Method and has been fortunate to have had private instruction from some of the very best-Dominique Eade, Peter Eldridge, Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, Judy Niemack, Gretchen Parlato, Darmon Meader,

Jo Lawry and Anita Wardell.