Presenting District: Hillsboro
Presenter: Dr. Lisa Neher
Program Description: Most music teachers experience burnout and overwhelm. How can we create and maintain a studio that is sustainable for our economic needs and our personal and family well-being? This presentation will offer best practices for designing studio policies and practices to ensure stable finances for you and your family, protect your time and energy, and provide clarity and professionalism to your students and studio families. Topics include: tuition models, billing and scheduling software, studio contracts and policies, the ever-present “makeup lesson” question, healthy and joyful boundaries, and more. We will have time to address your questions and share strategies with one another.

About Lisa Neher: New music powerhouse Dr. Lisa Neher (she/her) is an award-winning composer, mezzo-soprano, and actress on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. Described as a “visionary composer” (Willamette Week), “maestro of beautifully wacky noises” (Oregon ArtsWatch), and a composer of “varied and imitable” vocal lines (Contemporary Classical), Neher writes music inspired by the climate crisis, the tender love of friends, the ambiguities of death, and the eerie mystery of deep ocean life. Her EP Of Wind and Waves explores the currents of air, water, and emotions that define our natural and psychological world.

Neher’s works have been commissioned and performed by Third Angle New Music, Fear No Music, Opera Elect, Opera Theatre Oregon, Dinosaur Annex, the Cortona Sessions for New Music, Delgani String Quartet, Choral Arts Ensemble, and others across the United States and Europe. She is the winner of the ICDA/ICF Choral Competition, the Flute New Music Consortium Composition Competition, and the Mirror Visions Ensemble Young Composer Competition, and was a NATS Composer Mentee, working with Tom Cipullo.

Praised as “a small woman with a very big voice” and “especially alive” (Oregon ArtsWatch), Neher captivates audiences as a performer with her electrifying dramatic commitment and unforgettable vocal colors. Her performance credits include Really Spicy Opera, Third Angle New Music, the Resonance Ensemble, New Music Gathering, Queer Opera, the International Saxophone Symposium, and Opera Theatre Oregon. She is a member of Portland Opera Chorus. She created the roles of Jennifer in Chamber Sounds of Singapore’s world premiere of One Thousand Paper Cranes for Japan by Rita Ueda, Julian of Norwich in Brook Joyce’s monodrama the Showing of Love, and the protagonist in Space Station 189, a sci-fi opera for Instagram by JL Marlor and Aiden Feltkamp. Neher is the curator of the One Voice Project, which champions unaccompanied solo vocal performance.

Neher is a sought-after clinician on topics including composing for singers, networking, music business and entrepreneurship, acting for singers and theatre tools for musicians. Her teaching credits include the Ultimate Music Business Summit, and theToolbox Sessions, as well as guest clinician appearances at Reed College, University of Iowa, Colorado State University, OMTA, Bandung Philharmonic in Indonesia, and more. Her thriving private studio provides graduate-level education and mentorship in singing, composition, and career building for musicians from Australia to Europe. Neher holds degrees from the University of Iowa (DMA), University of Kansas (MM), and Lewis & Clark College (BA). She is an alumnus of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and the Cortona Sessions for New Music. She spends her free time training for triathlons, watching science fiction movies, and baking delicious treats involving copious amounts of chocolate. Her last name is pronounced “NEER.” For more information, visit her website, www.lisanehermusic.com.