We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa Sain Odom. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lisa Sain below.
Lisa Sain, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I started singing and acting in school and church at a very young age, and it was always one of my favorite things to do. But when I was a young teen, I excelled in some voice competitions, and that encouraged my parents to enroll me in voice lessons and allow me to audition for musicals. The first real musical in which I performed changed my life. I couldn’t get enough of it. I immediately tried out for the next musical I could, and I knew that there was nothing I’d rather do than spend time singing and acting. When I thought about college and the other majors I’d considered, I also thought about what it would be like to be a Psychology or Pre-Law student sitting in an audience and watching other students performing on stage, and I could not stand the thought! I knew I had to be one of those students ON that stage. So I chose to major in Vocal Performance, and I never looked back.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
After I got my Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance, I realized that getting a Masters was the next step for aspiring opera singers. I had never considered advanced degrees as I was, in fact, the first person in my family to graduate from college. But I applied and was accepted into a Master of Music Vocal Performance degree program, and it was there that I got even more opera, concert and recital experience and where I first started teaching voice. I was working during college, and the university where I was studying had a pre-college program where members of the community could take lessons. I decided to apply to teach so that I could work in the field of music while I earned my degree. I was accepted as a teacher and given a few students to start, and I fell in love with teaching! It combined the things that I always aspired to do with my life – the arts and helping others. As I neared the end of my degree program, I applied to several schools where I could begin teaching, and by the time I graduated with my masters, I was able to step directly into an adjunct role teaching voice at a nearby university. It was only a few weeks before I knew that in a university music department was where I wanted to make my teaching home, so I began the work to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance. I completed my DMA and have continued to perform and advance my understanding of the voice and pedagogy as I developed my career as a teaching performer.
Now I am an Assistant Professor of Voice and Musical Theatre at Clemson University. I do still teach some private students as well, as I love working with people and voices of all ages and abilities. My commitment as a teacher is to walk alongside a student as they discover the beauty and abilities of their own voice. I empower my students to make choices about what music they want to sing, how they want to use their voice, and where and how they perform. I’ve have students who are now rock and country singers working in Nashville and/or touring the country performing. I’ve had students who are opera singers and/or voice teachers in universities, having earned their own advanced degrees in Vocal Performance or Pedagogy. And I’ve had students who are singing on cruise ships, at Disney, and in regional theatre and on Broadway. And this year, one of my teen students won the Platinum Ticket on American Idol! One of the things I love most about teaching voice is working with so many different voice types with different talents and goals, sometimes all in one day!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
It seems that the arts ask those who operate within it to pivot rather more frequently than many other careers. We all know that we now live in a “gig” economy. Those days are gone when someone works at one business for 50 years, earns their gold watch and retires from that same company in which they began their career. Nowhere is this more true than the arts. As I mentioned earlier, my goal was to be a professional opera singer. But when I learned of all the expense involved with traveling to auditions, taking pay-to-sing opportunities, the necessity of going to certain schools and making connections within the business, and other obstacles young classical singers face, I realized the kind of career I had always intended might not be possible. This was one of many pivots in my career. It is when I began teaching and realized how much I loved it.
Another critical pivot was when I completed my work at the end of my masters program. I had started teaching, but I also had continued working off-and-on in the banking industry and was working in student services at my university in order to help pay for my degree as well. Upon my graduation, I was offered full-time positions in banking and in student services. These would be full-time positions with salaries and benefits – in short, the kind of security many artists can never achieve. My choice in that moment to pursue teaching full time, even though that meant working at several schools at once and not having a stable salary or benefits, is one of the biggest and best decisions I ever made. I chose to believe that I could build the life I wanted while also working in the arts.
This kind of pivot happened again when I chose to leave my handful of adjunct positions at a variety of schools and universities for one lecturer position at a single university. I had grown comfortable knowing that should one adjunct position disappear, I had others to help me continue to make a living. I gave all of those positions up, sacrificing at the time what felt like a safety net, to take a single lecturer position. It was not salaried, nor did it provide benefits. And if that job went away (as adjunct and lecturer jobs often do in higher ed), I would have nothing to fall back on. But I also knew that a lecturer position in a single university could give me the ability to put down roots in one place and give me the time and connection to really build a program. So I took that chance, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done for my career. I indeed put down roots, developed a thriving program, and never once regretted that choice. These pivots for me seem to have always been from what is safe or comfortable to something that felt risky but that also put me closer to the life I wanted. I would never say the riskier choice is always the best one, but I would say that, for me, taking well-considered risks was a much better path than if I had stayed safe and always wondered “what if.”
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
In the world of performing, it is so easy to get caught up in realizing our own dreams as artists, but I always wanted to find a way to help other people with my work. As a performer, I want to move people to feel something deep, to empathize and to cry; to laugh and to forget their troubles for a while; or to see an issue from a different perspective and to think about it in a way they haven’t before. As a teacher, I get to help people realize their dreams every day! Not every day does a student get their dream role or job, but every day I can empower a student to love their voice more thoroughly, to trust themselves a little deeper, and to honor their body and its abilities more devotedly. This ability to impact an audience member or support a student with my work drives me to be the best artist and teacher and person that I possibly can. And in the process of helping others, my dreams are realized as well!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lisasainodom.com
- Instagram: @LisaSainOdom
- Linkedin: Lisa Sain Odom
- Twitter: @LisaSainOdom
- Youtube: @dr.lisasainodom4457
- Other: http://www.clemsonchoirs.com/staff