Bio
home
bio
philosophy
big voice workshops
private voice studio
contact
 

Elaine OverholtElaine Overholt is one of North America's most respected and treasured singers and voice coaches, having coached the likes of Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, with a reputation for working miracles in the studio and on the set. With a lifetime of classical training in both piano and voice, she attended The University of Western Ontario first as a Piano Performance major, where she accompanied singers under many voice teachers. When her passion for the voice became unstoppable as she worked under international opera coaches, she switched majors and then graduated with an honors degree in Voice Performance, having performed hundreds of operatic, oratorio and choral works. In addition to this, Miss Overholt had grown up commandeering pop groups in high school and playing and singing full-fledged gospel music in her evangelical church. She was the organist at 11, and the choir director at 14 and believes it was this experience that taught her to open up her heart.

Developing her own style, she went on to perform on world stages, major network television, albums, films, and thousands of jingles such as "Diet Coke", "Pepsi", "Cottonelle", "Mazda", "Toyota", & McDonald's" to name a few. Elaine's career as a solo recording artist produced two albums and a No. 3 single on Billboard. As a "session singer" she has sung back-up vocals for Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Anne Murray, Dionne Warwick, The Weather Girls ("It's Raining Men"), Ronnie Spector, Sharon Lois & Bram, Chubby Checker, Triumph and hundred of albums. She knows the difficulty of keeping the voice healthy during road work, interviews, 8 shows a week, buses and no sleep. She has dealt with the best and worst onstage monitor systems, the best and worst sound systems, and the best and worst television directors and studio producers. Thus, she knows all the joys and tragedies of live performance.

Having performed internationally in England, the U.S., Canada, the high Arctic, Bosnia, Egypt, Israel and Croatia, she has sung for dignitaries including her beloved Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the representatives of the United Nations (with the Boys Choir of Harlem). Her performance of the national anthems at Toronto's Skydome for the Donovan Bailey & Michael Johnson face-off as "The Fastest Man in the World" was unforgettable.

 

 
1 | 2 | 3