By Sara Humphries
Dr. Anne Schantz teaches students that music is more than just singing, that music is a part of what makes them who they are.
Dr. Anne Schantz
As assistant professor of music, Schantz teaches many courses such as voice performance, music education, musical theatre, and vocal pedagogy to voice performance and choral music education majors.
“I want them to leave here with a stash of tools that they can choose from to sing anything they need or want to, and the confidence to know they can,” said Schantz. “I also want them to know that they are more than just their voices, that music and theater are parts of the amazing humans they are.”
Reinhardt’s music department offers a variety of courses that speak to the University’s mission to educate the whole person. School of Performing Arts students experience education in different types of courses, such as applied lessons to address principal instruments, solo and ensemble performances to teach presentation, music theory to show how music is put together and how it functions and music history to provide context and show how music affects the world.
“We teach the whole musician and the whole human. Everything we experience, in classes or in just living life, brings something to our craft.”
Schantz believes it takes a lot more than “natural talent” to be a successful musician.
“I think a lot of people assume singers are just ‘born with it,’ or that if you need to study and learn and build, that you are not very good. That is just untrue. Of course, there are some rare ones that just naturally sound ‘perfect,’ but there is always room to grow, expand your abilities, find new ways to create and tell stories.”
Schantz earned her bachelors of music in Music Performance, with piano and voice concentrations, from Southern Nazarene University in 1996 and her masters in music in Voice Performance from the University of Oklahoma in 2000. She said she has had successes but it is also her struggles which have been necessary to her growth as a musician.
“I have succeeded, struggled and failed at lots of things. My mom told me a long time ago that no time or experience is wasted, that everything teaches us something.”
Schantz’s favorite part of teaching is her students and that she can work with her husband, Dr. Cory Schantz, associate professor of music. Her students refer to her as “Dr. Lady Schantz” and her husband as “Dr. Man Schantz.”
In her free time, she enjoys reading, sewing, knitting and gardening.
