coaching for Composers & Singers

Hi, I’m Dr. Lisa Neher.

I’m a new music mezzo, composer, and coach.

I work with singers and composers to accelerate their artistic and career dreams.

And I'm a Composing for Singers specialist who helps composers polish, edit, and workshop their operas, choral works, art songs, and chamber vocal works so that singers come lining up at your door, clamoring for your music. 

Musicians come to me when they are ready to make big strides in their life. I help them get un-stuck, build momentum, and create major changes in their music making in a short period of time. 

In the last year, my clients have:
  • Successfully pitched 4-figure commissioning rates to ensembles, earning thousands of dollars as a composer for the first time
  • Polished, cast, premiered their opera
  • Revised their choral catalog to make their music idiomatic, ensure singers will stay in tune, and that their text will be understood
  • Started their own production company
  • Won auditions & gigs, raised rates, sold their scores, pitched and sold their services to others, and expanded their reach across the world
  • Moved from anxiety to ease in networking & building professional relationships
  • Started their first commissioning consortium with an elite professional as the lead commissioner
  • Won composer competitions, leading to premieres
  • Launched their websites, webstores, email newsletters, and professional social media presences with authenticity-no sliminess allowed!
  • Set boundaries in their professional and personal lives, leading to greater happiness, productivity, and financial security
  • Found their voice in commuicating their story as an artist with others in written and spoken materials
  • Clarified their artistic vision, let go of perfectionism & created with confidence and joy

Want to know what it's like to tackle your greatest dreams with comprehensive support?
I can't wait to talk to you!
Sessions with Lisa gave my career the recharging that it needed.  I reconnected with musician friends in Ohio (I now live in Florida) and a soprano and woodwind trio are collaborating with me on a setting of a Christina Rossetti poem with a premiere in Ohio next spring.

So many great things have happened—all because of the mentoring I did with her.  She is smart, savvy, supportive, and warm-hearted.  I will forever be grateful.
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--Jerry Casey, Composer
As a neophyte opera composer in my seventies, with little formal musical training, I was struggling with every aspect of composing. Now, after only a few months of coaching by Lisa Neher, I have a professional-looking score ready for workshopping, nearly every singing role filled, a schedule, a budget, and best of all, the confidence to move forward with this project.

Lisa’s intensively interactive approach to coaching, with detailed feedback...made all this possible. Lisa patiently and systematically taught me so much: how to write music that singers will want to sing; how to mark expression, tempo, dynamics; how to spell pitches; how to organize scores; how to plan a workshop and engage artists. Through it all, she encouraged me to believe that I could actually do these things.

--Ashley Hastings, Composer
Lisa makes a virtual teaching space feel like you're with her in person and in spite of the digital barriers, she really sees you. When I felt stuck, Lisa was great at brainstorming with me for new solutions, examples, and ideas. One of Lisa's strengths in teaching composition is helping people organize their thoughts in coherent ways so that their creativity isn't hindered by clutter.

--Perry, Music Educator
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