Our Team…
Stephanie Marko EMCI-TP-SD (She/Her)
selected credentials
For a long time I had a question nobody could answer properly.
I was a working performer. Opera, music theatre, contemporary, session singing, choral work. My voice could move between styles. But my classical teachers insisted that anything outside Bel Canto was dangerous, and when I asked why, the answer was always the same. Support more. Use your diaphragm. Feel it here. Not explanations. Instructions without understanding.
After opera studies at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts, and working with Opera Australia and Music Theatre touring companies, the belt and pop qualities I had relied on professionally started to feel unreliable. I reached out to teachers across Australia and Europe. I got more of the same.
At some point, I stopped teaching. I had started to feel that I was passing on information that was not working, and that felt dishonest.
My mother found it first. She saw an interview with a performer who described how Estill Voice Training had given them the ability to sing in different styles, healthily, with no agenda about how a voice should sound. I found a teacher the same week.
What I found was not a technique. It was an explanation. The things I had been told were dangerous turned out to be specific, describable, repeatable choices. I fell in love with the work.
That understanding is what I bring to every session I teach. Not instructions or abstract cues. The actual framework. What is happening, why it is happening, and what choices are available from there. I know what it costs to work without it.
Estill Voice Training Estill Mentor Course Instructor with Testing Privileges and Service Distinction. Teaching the Estill Voice Model for twenty years across Australia, Asia, Europe and the UK.
University teaching Popular Music, Monash University. Masters of Performance (Teaching) Melbourne University. Guest lecturer in Voice Mechanics and Practice Strategies across all year levels.
Teaching experience Voice and singing teacher for over 40 years, working with students from early childhood through to professional development, in studios, schools, workshops, dance schools and conservatories. Musical director for music theatre productions.
Performance Professional performer across Australia and Europe in opera, music theatre, contemporary gigging, session singing, corporate, choral and backing vocal work.
Grizabella / Jellylorum cover - CATS, Denmark (Danish)Gumbie / Jenny Anydots - CATS, Germany (German)Carlotta - Phantom of the Opera, Germany (German)Voice Consultant - Strictly Ballroom, AustraliaHello Dolly - Gordon/Frost Australasian TourCarmen (Stadium Production) - Opera AustraliaWhat People Are Saying…
“Stephanie gave me so much personal attention and I really feel like in a week… she has revolutionised the way I think about coaching, music directing, and my own voice. Stephanie was perfect. So supportive, kind, made me feel taken care of and that she would have answers for my vocal ‘fragility’. She has given me faith that my voice is not broken.”
“Stephanie Marko is the most inspirational teacher I have ever had the pleasure of working with. My voice is now doing things I never thought possible and fixing various things that had been ‘drummed’ into me during training has had such a predominant effect in terms of purifying my tone.”
“Steph was incredibly articulate, detailed in her explanations, caring, thorough, precise, positive, and absolutely gorgeous as a teacher.”
I am a puzzler. Every puzzle piece paints part of a picture, and as an educator, I am vigilant of the fact that every student’s puzzle is different. Every voice is a unique instrument, and everyone with a voice is a unique learner. Every vocal task is a puzzle in itself, where some pieces fit together and some pieces don’t. I love attaching the questions “Will it work” and “Why” to each student, as it assists me in demonstrating that regardless of how complex the process looks, every puzzle is solvable.
My previous work in voice mechanics and my current work in education enable me to intimately understand how different triggers, methodologies, and forms of imagery can help all types of students, regardless of their puzzle-piecing experience.
Whether you are aiming to achieve excellence in your vocal performance, or you are recovering from a vocal injury, I recognise that a vocal journey is a challenging one. But having gone through this journey myself, I also recognise that with every challenge, there is the reward of knowledge, and the ability to look at your puzzle from a newfound perspective.
Gerald Marko EMCI-TP-SD (He/Him)
I find joy in learning alongside my students and dissecting their problems with them. I love watching each student build their own vocal identity piece by piece and I pledge to do this joyously, through experimentation and play.
The only thing left for you to do is to bring your puzzle into the Voice Gym and solve it one piece at a time.
Gerald is a Estill Mentor and Course Instructor with Testing Privileges and Service Distinction. Originally from Graz, Austria, he has been living in Australia 20 years. Gerald is currently enrolled in his PhD (Education, Monash), where he has embarked on an international, cross-disciplinary study bringing sport science, voice mechanics, psychometrics and tertiary learning and teaching together.
He is permanent staff at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music (Monash), where he holds the continued position of Scholarly Teaching Fellow. At Monash, Gerald is the unit coordinator for ensemble studies as well as the ensemble director for the Voice Tech Ensemble and the Musical Theatre Chorus. In 2019, Gerald's efforts have been recognised by receiving an Monash Arts Faculty award, namely the Faculty Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.
On stage experience ranges from lead roles in professional European Music Theatre (400 shows/year) such as CATS, Saturday Night Fever, Buddy Holly and Hair, to lead vocals in bands in Austria, Germany, Denmark and Australia. He plays piano, guitar, drums and bass, is a published songwriter with Universal, a certified Rei-Ki practitioner, has multiple licensed songs in 3 award winning American short films and is a member of AVA, ANATS, APRA (writer) and AMCOS (publisher).
Furthermore, Gerald enjoys teaching Estill courses in Europe and Australia to singers, teachers (i.e. at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Jazz University Graz, Raimund Theatre Vienna) and speech pathologists (i.e. Division of speech pathology at UQ, University clinic Graz).
He presented and performed at the Australian Jazz and Improvisation Research Network (AJIRN) symposium in Melbourne (2018), the 2nd International Jazz Voice Symposium in Helsinki (2017), the symposium for Performing Arts and Healthcare in Sydney (2014), was voice consultant to the Musical "Strictly Ballroom" at Her Majesty's Theatre (Melbourne) and is assisting singers through the recovery process from vocal injury in association with Australia’s leading laryngologists.
What People Are Saying…
“Gerald is very entertaining and motivating and an extremely great role model.”
“Gerald is an amazing communicator, and manages to explain highly technical and difficult subjects with ease and comedy. He’s knowledge clearly goes beyond singing, and he melts his worldly and scientific knowledge in with his teaching to create a very holistic learning environment. He really cares about his students, and you feel very safe and nurtured under his instruction.”
“Gerald was interesting, engaging, fun and explained everything thoroughly. He was approachable and I never felt bad about asking him anything.”