Anyone can learn to sing - EVEN YOU!
Reegan McKenzie
Singer, stage director, teacher, dramatic coach and recording artist ¾ began her directing career in college, staging numerous University productions while simultaneously building an enviable singing career.
Yarts/Studio 691 is a new facet to Ms. McKenzie’s career, where she is using all her skills to help build the Arts program at the Wyckoff YMCA of New Jersey. It is a wonderful thing to be a part of the growth of Y-Arts having stage-directed from the inception of it’s community theater in 2008: Scrooge, the Musical, Beauty and the Beast, King and I, Wizard of Oz, Annie, and most recently Sound of Music.
In the Fall of 2010, she was instrumental in forming the new Opera company OPERA @ 691, where she directed and performed in Gianni Schicchi. Summer 2011, the brand new workshop HATS OFF TO BROADWAY will be apart of the after hours conservatory. Featuring training in choreography, voice and acting withone of the asst directors of Radio City, and the New Mexico Dance Artistic Director of National Dance Institute of New Mexico, Tim Santos, where Reegan taught voice during the summer session of 2009, and her colleague and regular musical director, Georgianna Pappas.
Summer 2004, Ms. McKenzie made her musical theater debut in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Home of the International Mostly Mozart Festival. Bartlesville Children’s Musical Theater’s production: PETER PAN, was considered by far the most ambitious and successful of their five years, featuring over 80 children, She has returned in to direct BEAUTY AND THE BEAST(06), HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL(08), and THE MUSIC MAN(10).
Spring of ’10 Ms. McKenzie directed her fifth production with Boheme Opera: MADAMA BUTTERFLY. Her Trenton debut, LUCIA DI LAMMERMOORE, she received critical acclaim as did her second production, CARMEN. In CARMEN she integrated a New Jersey – based professional children’s chorus ¾ Passagio Chorale ¾ in their show-stopping cameo. Including the ’04 CAVALLERIA-PAGLIACCI, and AIDA her shows have been called “crisp, pure theater, and innovative while keeping the integrity of the pieces performed…brilliant, provoking and mesmerizing.”
A veteran soprano, Reegan has toured extensively with San Francisco Opera Center’s Western Opera, performed with Tulsa Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Pocket Opera, Liederkranz Opera Theater and performed with other tri-state and regional companies. Her Lincoln Center debut was Rossini’s MOSE’ with the late world-famous bass, JEROME HINES and Ars Musica. As a fellow with Hines’ OPERA MUSIC THEATER INTERNATIONAL, Ms. McKenzie made her Bolshoi Opera debut in I AM THE WAY, being featured in the role of “Martha” on the recent CD recording of it. As a singer, she won many competitions: