About Kathleen

Kathleen Kernohan has been a professional singer, actress, harpist and recording artist for over 25 years. She has performed in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Seattle, the Caribbean, San Francisco, and on national tours. She toured with Robert Goulet in his night club act and in "Carousel" and also performed at the Seattle Repertory Theater, ACT, Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera, Pasadena Playhouse, Utah Shakespearean Festival and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She has performed for or with Michael Douglas, Bernadette Peters, Don Ho, Jean Stapleton, Groucho Marx, Robert Goulet, Manhatten Transfer, Helen Reddy, and Gordon MacRae. Her recordings include "The Quite Land of Erin"--- Irish Songs with Celtic Harp.

Kathleen graduated from the University of Washington (Cum Laude) with a degree in Music and Drama, with post-grad work in Education at California Lutheran University. She has taught singing, acting, harp, commercials, and creative dramatics for over 25 years. She taught in the Santa Barbara School District and the Conejo Valley Unified School District. For 15 years, she had her own Children's Creative Theater in Santa Barbara. She was also a children's and teen's commercial manager in Hollywood. Her private training has been with Seth Riggs, Barbara Cook, David Craig, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Darryl Hickman, and 6 master teachers (IMT's) of Speech Level Singing.

She is a certified teacher of the world famous Speech Level Singing technique developed by maestro Seth Riggs. Kathleen studied as a voice student with Seth for 9 years until he encouraged her to become a teacher herself. She was honored, especially since SLS is by far the best technique she has ever come across. Speech Level Singing enables people to sing with a relaxed and effortless way that they speak. It has been used with great success by over 120 Grammy winners including such notables as Josh Groban, Natalie Cole, Stevie Wonder, David Archuleta (American Idol), Cher, Madonna, Bernadette Peters, Jenifer Lopez, Michael Bolton, Jesse McCartney, four winners of the Metropolitan Opera Award, and many, many other successful singers. Since Speech Level Singing is a technique,a foundation for singing, it can therefore be used for any style---pop, musical theater, jazz, country, rock, opera, gospel. In fact it is used by such diverse styles as singers Ray Charles to Phil Webb (principal Metropolitan lyric tenor) SLS enables singers to perform in any style with freedom and flexibility and with voices that remain healthy throughout a lifetime of singing.

Kathleen is delighted to be teaching this technique, for she wished she had discovered it early on in her career. She wants to save other singers some of the pitfalls. Besides the technique, she realizes how important it is to also impart confidence to the student. Seth Riggs once told her that teaching singing can be as much a joy as performing. She has certainly found that to be true--especially the heart warming rewards that come with a student's success.