Baritone Dean Southern to Join CIM Voice Faculty

The Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) is pleased to announce the appointment of baritone Dr. Dean Southern to its voice faculty, beginning this fall.

"The Cleveland Institute of Music is delighted that Dr. Southern will be rejoining our faculty. He was chosen from a number of candidates following a national search by a selection committee," said Conservatory Dean Adrian Daly. "Dr. Southern is well known and admired on the national level, having been a frequent performer, presenter and clinician around the United States in addition to his work internationally at AIMS-Graz and beyond."

Dr. Southern served on CIM’s faculty previously, after earning a graduate degree, leaving to join the faculty at the University of Miami Frost School of Music in Coral Gables, where he taught voice and vocal pedagogy and served as stage director for the Frost Opera Theater.

Dr. Southern earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from CIM as a student of Mary Schiller after earning a master’s in voice performance from the University of Akron, where he studied with Clifford Billions. Dr. Southern also holds a bachelor’s degree from Luther College in Iowa and a master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Missouri.

"I am confident that Dr. Southern will work tirelessly on behalf of the department and will complement the approach to vocal performance that has been so well established for many years at CIM," Dean Daly said. "I look forward to welcoming him back and know that our students will benefit greatly from his expertise and teaching excellence."

Students of Dr. Southern have been accepted to prestigious programs and graduate schools, awarded Fulbrights and have successful careers as performers and teachers. Dr. Southern regularly presents master classes in the U.S. and abroad, including the Kungliga Musikhögskolan (Royal College of Music) in Stockholm (Sweden), the Conservatorio Profesional de Música in Valencia (Spain) and the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. Since 2004, he has spent his summers on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, where he teaches voice and gives the Henry Pleasants lecture series on historic singers.

"Dr. Southern will be an outstanding addition to our voice faculty,” said Mary Schiller, head of CIM’s voice department and Dr. Southern’s former teacher. “His contributions to our department will be creative and innovative as we continue to perform opera and art song repertoire at CIM at the highest artistic level.”

In addition to performing and teaching, Dr. Southern is a columnist for Classical Singer magazine. The magazine has also published his articles, “Practicing 101: Ten Tips for Making the Most of Your Time Between Lessons” and the three-part series “Distant Voices: Listening to Singers of the Past.” His presentation by the same name is a multimedia guided tour through the first half-century of recorded vocal history and is a feature of his visits to colleges, universities and arts organizations across the country.