In her early years, Emily enjoyed both singing and acting in plays and concerts at her school, Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, in Ghent, NY, and throughout the community.  She had the freedom to run across the fields of the neighboring organic farm, using hay wagons as stages, to put on plays and musicals with friends, as well as spontaneously perform songs or tap dance for any passersby. 

Emily’s grandfather, Walter Klavun, was a successful Broadway actor, and she would go on family trips to New York City to watch him on stage.  While there, Emily would visit her grandmother, Betty Klavun, a sculptor, and another family artist of note, who had entertained famous artists and writers, such as Allen Ginsburg, in her home in New York City. Both of Emily's parents were Waldorf teachers, at her school, and so Emily was nurtured by a family with a strong connection to and love of the arts.

By high school, she was studying formal classical singing technique, learning operatic arias, German, French and Italian art songs, choral solos, and musical theater pieces.

Emily then attended Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, NY, as a Music Major, with a focus also on Italian and German language study, giving an Honors Recital among other performances, while completing her Bachelor of Arts, cum laude. During college, she also studied in Vienna, Austria, at The Institute for European Studies, performing in concerts there, and in a Theater festival in Madrid, Spain.

During the summer after her freshman year at college, Emily was hired as the youngest professional singer at Lake George Opera Festival (now Opera Saratoga), where she performed supporting roles and sang as a member of the chorus, and continued to sing throughout the rest of her college summers there, including on stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Internationally, Emily’s performances included leading roles in choral concerts and plays in Vienna, Austria and Madrid, Spain, as well as in Bernried, Germany, where she performed in an acclaimed Art Song festival.

In addition to her operatic background, Emily completed an Associate of Arts, in Theater, at a competitive acting school in Manhattan, The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where her teacher, Ron Stetson, had been trained directly by legend and founder Sanford Meisner, and she acted in plays throughout New York City and the New York Metropolitan Area.

Theatrical roles included Irene Roth in Crazy for You, and Gloria Upson in Mame, at The Sharon Playhouse, in Connecticut, and various others in regional and national children’s theater tours.

In 2010, Emily completed her Master of Music in Opera Studies at Purchase Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY, studying with top New York City Conservatory teachers and directors. 

Credits there included Mother in Menotti’s Amahl & The Night Visitors, Second Lady in Mozart’s Magic Flute, and the Mother Abess and Monitor in Puccini’s Suor Angelica on the Main Stage at the Performing Arts Center in Purchase, NY, as well as her solo Master’s Recital.

Emily’s teaching background includes directing lower to high school aged students at Barrington Stage Company’s KidsAct theater camp, in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, instructing children in workshops while on educational theater tours with The Grumbling Gryphons, directing college students in opera scenes and coaching undergraduate singing diction (at Purchase Conservatory), and giving private voice lessons in New York City, Miami and the Berkshires, to students performing at local talent shows, in school musicals, and on Broadway — teaching a variety of ages, levels and styles.

Fusing her expertise in classical singing, acting, and musical theater, Emily’s goal in creating Empowered Singing is to pass on her knowledge and help others powerfully, and joyfully express themselves and communicate through song!