Lorraine Hale

Owner

Welcome to Lorraine Hale Music Instruction! Thank you for your interest in high quality and success-oriented music experiences and rigorous academic enrichment opportunities.

Lorraine Hale is an active professional performer and award-winning teacher whose career spans four decades and two continents. As a fourteen-year-old, Hale was admitted as a scholarship student in voice and piano at the Peabody Institute of Music Preparatory Department of Johns Hopkins University one of whose missions is to offer gifted “adolescents the opportunity to realize their highest potential as leaders of the next generation of performing artists”. There she studied with Russian pianist Lubov Breit Keefer and various vocal coaches and was chosen for master classes (in piano) with Leon Fleischer and (in conducting) with Peter Hermann Adler. She was a regular accompanist in the conservatory division, holds a Diploma in Performance from the Peabody, and has had further study With William Zukov (Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, New York), Gladys White, Perry Smith, and Phyllis Clark.

Hale is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS); a faculty member of the American College of Musicians (the teaching division of the National Guild of Piano Teachers -— NGPT); and a life member of the American Choral Directors’ Association, the National Federation of Music Clubs, and Delta Omicron Music Honor Society. For several decades, she has annually been certified and recertified by the National Guild of Piano Teachers as a master instructor; and she has for over three decades participated in elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels of Suzuki training. Her principal Suzuki mentor has been Dr. Ray Landers.

Hale’s solo performances span five decades and two continents, with appearances at locations across the US and Canada and in Germany. Particularly memorable were opportunities to play in Seesen, Germany, at the centennial exhibit of the pianos of Wilhelm Steinweg/ Steinway and on Georg Telemann’s spinet from Telemann’s own works in the Telemann Museum in Hamburg, Germany. Hale is a founding member of the Ad Hoc Players Early Music Ensemble and Voci Allegre Vocal Ensemble, and was twice featured vocal and harpsichord soloist for the American visits of Lord George Carey of Clifton, Archbishop of Canterbury.

She is sought after as a regular adjudicator for NATS, NGPT, and the North Carolina Music Association; and her students have been state, regional, and national Winners in prestigious competitions. Her students have performed at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery of Colonial Williamsburg and on the historic organ at The College of William and Mary’s Wren Chapel as well as at New Bern’s MumFest.

Public service includes previous chairmanship of the North Carolina Arts Council sections for Music and for Touring/Presenting and membership on the Literature Panel. She has served on the Board of the Friends of Hope Plantation (Windsor, North Carolina) and in 2014 was reappointed to the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. She has chaired or served on the selection committee of Lit and Hist’s Hardee-Rives Award for the Dramatic Arts since its inception and was the presenter (to Terrence Mann) of the 2014-2015 award. Also in the winter of 2014-2015 , Hale was appointed as one of seven statewide review panelists to identify candidates for the position of North Carolina Poet Laureate. She was recognized for this special service by Governor Pat McCrory and Secretary of Cultural Resources Susan Kluttz at the January 2015 poet laureate installation ceremony at the Old Capitol (Raleigh, North Carolina). In August of 2015 she had the honor to be appointed by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to serve on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council. The governor’s authorizing language recognizes Hale’s contributions: “Your service will have an immediate and positive impact upon the changes we are making in our state. We need leaders such as you in public service to help promote our vision and realization of a better North Carolina.” This public service concluded in June 2018, but her other statewide service activities continue.

In addition to her extensive music credentials, Hale attended Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) where she continued her study of music and studied English language/ academic skills pedagogy. She holds degrees in English and history from East Carolina University, where she was later recruited to teach in the Department of English. Her career in higher education at ECU also included her selection and long-time service as director of ECU’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Center for the Liberal Arts. An avid Writer and editor, Hale served for many years as the senior associate editor of the award-winning journal, the North Carolina Literary Review, and she continues to write, edit, and publish professionally in other venues as well. Her work as an advocate for education and humanities has also, for over a decade, placed her on the national scene and taken her to Capitol Hill where she has made presentations to members of Congress and their staffs.

Professional Service in Music (selected)

  • Past President - East Carolina/St. Cecilia Music Club, a division of the North Carolina Federation of Music Clubs (1995-2013)
  • Chairman – Greenville district NC Music Teachers’ Association (2003-present)
  • Chairman – National Guild of Piano Teachers New Bern Auditions (1994-present)

Performance and Recording Credentials (selected)

  • A Colonial Christmas and Moré – The Ad Hoc Players at Bath, North Carolina (produced by Sound Hut Studios, Kinston, NC)
  • Founding member – The Ad Hoc Players Early Music Ensemble (Kinston, NC)
  • Founding member and artistic director – Voci Allegre Vocal Ensemble (New Bern, NC)
  • The Jamestowne Society, Raleigh, NC
  • Tryon Palace Historic Sites and Gardens, New Bern, NC
  • Palmer Marsh House, Historic Bath, NC
  • Bonner House, Historic Bath, NC
  • St. Thomas Church (public events), Bath, NC
  • The Tickle Inn, Cape Onion, Newfoundland, Canada
  • Sommer Fest, Schwäbisch Hall, Germany