Voice Instructor
Dr. Benjamin Czarnota is a voice teacher, performer, and pedagogue whose students havegone on to perform on Broadway, National Tours, regional stages across the country, and in highly competitive collegiate training programs. A member of the voice faculty at Baldwin Wallace Community Arts School and a former member of the Conservatory voice faculty at Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, he recently completed the Doctor of Music degree at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he also earned a Graduate Certificate in Vocology.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr. Czarnota served as Coordinator of Musical Theater Voice at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His students have appeared in Broadway productions including American Psycho, Anastasia, Godspell, Hands on a Hardbody, Kinky Boots, Les Misérables, The Lightning Thief, and ONCE, as well as on national tours of A Chorus Line, The Color Purple, Dear Evan Hansen, Flashdance, Hadestown, Kinky Boots, Pretty Woman, and Wicked. Former students have also been admitted to programs suchas Oberlin Conservatory, the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the Penn State School of Theatre, the Shenandoah Conservatory, and the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music.
Known for his versatile and individualized approach to training, Dr. Czarnota works with singers and performers across a wide range of styles, from classical and opera to contemporary commercial music and musical theater. His teaching emphasizes healthy, sustainable vocalism, stylistic flexibility, and the development of confident, expressive performers. Drawing upon both performance experience and advanced study in voice science and pedagogy, he is particularly interested in helping singers navigate performance pressure, build reliable technique, and cultivate a deeper understanding of the relationship between voice, body, and communication. His work in stress-informed voice pedagogy explores the relationship between learning, performance, and the nervous system, and he has presented on these topics at the annual meeting of the Ohio chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). In addition to his classical training, he has pursued extensive study in contemporary commercial music pedagogy and functional voice training approaches, and contributed supplemental applied materials to The Vocal Athlete by Wendy LeBorgne and Marci Rosenberg.
As a performer, Dr. Czarnota has appeared in opera, concert, and musical theater productions throughout the United States. He originated the roles of Mr. Webb in the world premiere of Our Town and of Otto Frank in the world premiere of Anne Frank. Additional operatic roles include Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Schaunard in La Bohème, and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro with companies including Wichita Grand Opera, Cleveland Opera Theater, and Indiana University Opera Theater. Regional musical theater appearances include Sweeney Todd, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, My Fair Lady, Children of Eden, and South Pacific. He also served for two seasons as the official national anthem singer for the Cleveland Browns.
EDUCATION
- Doctor of Music, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
- Graduate Certificate in Vocology, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
- Master of Music in Voice Performance, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
- Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance and Music Theory, Baldwin Wallace University
