UW-Whitewater Solo Voice Camp

07/31/2025

The Solo Voice Camp Recital is tomorrow morning at 10:30 am in Fern Young Terrace on the upper level of The Young! See you there!! Banquet and Dress Rehearsal are tonight.

08/04/2024

A photo sampling from our 08-02-24 recital in Fern Young Terrace.

08/02/2024

Photos from Solo Voice 2024!

08/08/2023

Photos from Solo Voice 2023!

05/22/2023

It's time to get registered for our 2023 Voice Camp! July 30-August 4. Check out the website for further information: https://www.uww.edu/ce/camps/music/solovoice #:~:text=This%20is%20the%20ideal%20camp,education%20are%20encouraged%20to%20attend.

05/25/2022

Meet another of our camp counselors! There are just 74 days until camp begins....

Hi! I’m Molly Wanless a recently graduated Vocal Performance Major from UW-Whitewater. I’m from Milton, WI, I sing soprano, and I hope one day to earn a doctorate in musicology! A fun fact about me is I love pretzel m&m’s!!

05/25/2022

Here is a message from one of our camp counselors this summer! You will love working with Tanner!

Hi! My name is Tanner Engeseth, and I’m going to be a Junior Music Education Major this fall at UWW. I’m a baritone from Deforest, WI, and I hope to one day go to graduate school and eventually teach at either the high school or collegiate level. One other fun fact about me is that I’m learning to play bass recorder!

05/20/2022

We welcome Lannette Calhoun to the Solo Voice Camp faculty. A graduate of Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa (BME) and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (MME) Lannette Calhoun is a retired music teacher from Milton Schools and the University of Wisconsin Whitewater at Rock County. She has been music director for 70+ musicals over the past 40 years, and continues to freelance as a collaborative pianist at UWW, various theaters, schools and churches in the area. Time spent with her husband, children and grandchildren round out her days.

05/20/2022

A Wisconsin transplant from Tennessee, singer, teacher, director, Dr. J. Adam Shelton is joining the faculty of Solo Voice Camp. Dr. Shelton has a DMA in vocal performance from UW-Madison and a killer sweet tea recipe. Reviewers and fans alike note his “fine tenor flamboyance” (John Barker, Isthmus & Madison Magazine) and how he is "effortlessly hilarious… like Harvey Feirstein with pitch.” At home in opera and musical theatre, Dr. Shelton has performed with Madison Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Madison Savoyards, Music Theatre of Madison, Four Seasons Theatre, Soo Symphony & Opera, Mid Columbia Mastersingers & Orchestra, La Musica Lirica, Arizona Opera, Knoxville Opera, and Opera For the Young. Career highlights include:

“Howard Boucher” in Dead Man Walking, “Frederic” in The Pirates of Penzance, “The Magician” in The Consul, “Ferrando” in Così fan tutte, “Nemorino” in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, “Jacob” in La Cage Aux Folles, “Richard” in A New Brain, “Larry Sugarman/Buddy” Little Miss Sunshine: The Musical, and “Chef Louis” in The Little Mermaid, among many others. He has music directed MammaMia!, Young Frankenstein, Falsettos, Singing in the Rain Jr., and Priscilla Queen of the Desert in addition to his stage directing credits.

As a pedagogue, Dr. Shelton teaches at UW-Whitewater and maintains the Shelton Private Voice Studio in Madison. His dissertation, “The Singing Dream: A 21st Century Critical Edition of Tauberlieder”, explored the compositions of the great Austrian tenor, Richard Tauber.In 2019, he received additional training from the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah Conservatory in jazz, pop/rock, country, and gospel. His students have gone on to noted national competitions and awards programs like the Jimmy Awards, NATS, Classical Singer, and The Schmidt Vocal Competition.

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is a college devoted to teaching, community and higher education. Our campus offers undergraduate and graduate degrees within a championship culture.

05/04/2022

Solo Voice Camp founder and faculty member Brian Leeper is in his 18th year of teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he teaches Studio Voice, Meistersingers Men’s Choir, and directs the UWW Opera Workshop. He has presented numerous master classes at colleges and universities in the US and abroad. Mr. Leeper is the former Artistic Director of La Musica Lirica, an international summer opera festival in Italy, where he was also a voice faculty member for 12 years. In the summer of 2019, Brian performed with the orchestra of Operafestival di Roma during their production of Suor Angelica in Rome and presented a masterclass for the program in Orvieto. Also an accomplished organist, Mr. Leeper also performed as organist for concerts with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chamber singers in the summer of 2019 in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Dresden, and Talheim, Germany, and Poznan, Poland. While in Frankfurt, Brian also coached American Art Song with several vocal students at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. Mr. Leeper has also directed choral ensembles at Western Illinois University (Chamber Singers and Madrigal Singers) and Nebraska Wesleyan University (Chamber Singers and Women’s Choir). In addition to his university choral experience, Mr. Leeper has also served as a full-time Minister of Music (choir director and organist) in churches in New Jersey, South Carolina and Indiana.

Mr. Leeper has performed over twenty major roles with opera companies in the US and Europe, including a live national radio broadcast performance of Candide with the Cleveland Orchestra from the Blossom Festival Center. He has also appeared soloist in oratorios with conductors Robert Shaw, Leon Botstein, Robert Page and Vance George. Solo Oratorio appearances in the past ten years include Brahm’s Deutsche Requiem Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Haydn’s Creation, Bach’s St. John Passion, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Rutter’s Mass of the Children, Walton’s Belshazzar'sFeast and Mozart’s Requiem. In 2010, Mr. Leeper toured Poland, performing operatic arias, and accompanying Chopin Songs and Musical Theatre Selections. In early summer of 2022, Mr. Leeper will sing the premier performances of Willa Cather songs with the Nebraska Chamber Players, in Lincoln and Red Cloud, Nebraska. Composer Chris Ellenwood composed the pieces in celebration of the publication centenary of Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, One of Ours.

Mr. Leeper holds degrees from Luther College and The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with further graduate study at Florida State University. He is a past President of the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and is advisor to the student chapter of SNATS at UW-Whitewater. In 2011, Mr. Leeper was the recipient of the university-wide Academic Staff Instructional Excellence Award at UW-Whitewater.