Welcome
Welcome to the 2025-2026 Trusted Alliance Masterclass annual fund drive, Amplifying Voices! If you believe in the transformative power of classical music, we invite you to join us in supporting the mission of Trusted Alliance. Our aim is to empower singers with the knowledge they need to become true collaborators with conductors, fostering an environment where creativity and artistry thrive.
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Empower Collaboration
If you believe that collaboration is more lifegiving than hierarchy, you can make a difference! Underwrite the travel costs for master classes at universities and young artist programs, where artists join together in a safe environment to share and create.
Promote a Healthy Music Industry
If you envision an artistic environment that prioritizes wellbeing, help us advocate for healthier, more collaborative rehearsal and performance spaces at national conferences where artists across the country come together. The path to change begins with honest conversations.
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Secure Our Future
If you believe that Trusted Alliance Masterclass is doing important work, you can secure our future. Your contributions can not only help us expand our young artist community, but also provide resources for us to reach out to mid-career conductors who can truly amplify voices.
Join us as we Amplify Voices! Together, we can create a brighter, more inclusive future for classical music and empower the next generation of artists to thrive.
Trusted Alliance, Inc. comprises 3 components: University master classes, a podcast, and digital Aria Preparation Companions
University Masterclasses
Trusted Alliance master classes are led by Maestro Nyela Basney and focus on the “synergy”, the musical collaboration, between conductor and singer. Over the years, as Nyela has conducted young vocal artists during festivals, master classes and concerts she has experienced firsthand how confusing and sometimes disheartening they find working with a conductor can be. In response to this observation, she founded Trusted Alliance, Inc. in 2017 as a way to help vocalists gain confidence in their work with conductors and to provide a safe place for them to ask questions about their experiences singing with conductors. Since then, industry professionals who have observed TA master classes have affirmed that the TA conversation helps develop an essential and, up to this point, relatively unaddressed skill that young vocal artists, coaches and conductors need in order to negotiate the first 20 years of their professional lives.
Trusted Alliance university master classes have taken Maestro Basney to Alabama, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa and New York, Pennsylvania, Bosnia and (online) to South Africa. In the classes, Miss Basney conducts vocal artists as they sing, offering tips on how to demonstrate awareness of a conductor's priorities in auditions, how to feel comfortable and empowered when collaborating with different types of conductors and how to have confidence that their musical and artistic intentions are clear. Each class includes time for participants to ask questions about working with conductors in a safe environment where honesty and authenticity are honored.
Podcast
"Music in the Moment", Trusted Alliance's podcast, has drawn attention from singers, conductors and educators alike. Recent guests have included Director, Performer and Dramatic Coach Susan Payne O'Brien, Mezzo-soprano and Apollos' Fire performer Raquel Winnica Young and NYC Conductor, Coach and Pianist William Hicks. Guests share insights from their singing and conducting careers and talk about artists who have inspired them and from whom they have learned valuable lessons.
Aria Preparation Companions
Trusted Alliance Aria Preparation Companions are digital documents which provide singers with practical information and strategies about how to prepare an aria with a future collaboration with a conductor in mind. The document includes annotated piano vocal and orchestra scores of the specific aria, an analysis of moments in the aria when singers will want to be prepared to pay special attention to a conductor and/or listen intently to certain instruments in the orchestra.
Learn more about Aria Preparation Companions here.
Why now?
Trusted Alliance not only offers one-of-a-kind training on the specifics of singing with an orchestra, but also addresses questions of empowerment, equality and non-hierarchical relationships in the opera business, questions whose answers bring more authenticity and trust to the artistic community, the stage and to the audience.
Donation Form
Frequency
One time
Yearly
Amount
APCs for Young Artists
$25
Travel Expenses for Conferences
$50
Social Media
$100
Staff Stipends
$200
Other
0/100
Comment (optional)