Linda George, age 61, started playing the piano at age 4 and continued to study piano through college where she earned a Music Education degree with emphasis on Piano Performance. She always loved to sing, but never knew she had a solo voice. In her mid-40's she decided to take some voice lessons to learn about technique and was instantly hooked. Since then she has focused on singing and has had about 7 or 8 years of lessons interwoven into her busy life, including over a year at Potomac Arts Academy with instructor Megan Wood.

Ordained as a minister in 1981, she served as a civilian chaplain for 8 years then felt drawn to serve as a chaplain in the military. It turned out to be a good fit since she was always more interested in being around people with different faith backgrounds rather than pastoring a local church.

After 24 years of service, she retired from the Army in 2006 at age 56 and is currently enrolled in a Doctoral program in Wisdom Studies at Wisdom University in California. Her dissertation will focus on an Indian reformer named Rabindranath Tagore and will include composing music for some of his poems. She feels her calling as a singer is to use her voice as a healing modality and routinely sings for residents at assisted living facilities. "Music brings people to life," Linda says, "Even when they have dementia and are otherwise unresponsive."

Going forward, Linda plans on continuing her voice lessons at Potomac with Megan. "Megan has been instrumental in helping me lighten my voice" says Linda. "Hormonal changes have affected my voice as I've gotten older and Megan has taught me new techniques so I can still sing."

When asked what advice she would give to other people who want to sing, she said "It's so easy to let criticism affect your self-esteem and that makes it all the more important to find a teacher who is encouraging and uplifting. If your instructor isn't encouraging you as a human being, find someone else!"

When she's not singing for her own pleasure, she teaches Singing for Fun at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at GMU. This year she was second runner up in the 2011 Ms. Senior Virginia American pageant in Alexandria, where her talent was singing of course! She is an avid animal lover and currently has 4 cats of her own while also caring for many neighborhood cats who like to stop by. She has been married for 17 years to Wayne George.

You can hear Linda sing in the Potomac Arts Academy Winter Recital on December 17, 2011 in the de Laski Performing Arts Building on the Mason campus at 1:00 pm. 

Tommy Wilson, a 15 year old sophomore from Oakton High School, has been a student at Potomac Arts Academy for the past 2 and a half years. He started out taking the Voice Class for Teens and then moved into private voice lessons with Ronnie Bell. Along the way, he added piano lessons with Lindsey Vogel to round out his musical skills and support his singing.

This past summer, he attended the Eastman School of Music summer program in Rochester, NY where he thinks he improved a lot. He said it was like a Governor's School, where he got to collaborate with other vocalists at the same level as him. There was a recital at the end of the program and he opted to perform the song Ombramaifu by Handel. He credits his acceptance into the competitive Eastman program to Ronnie and all the coaching he has given Tommy. "Being with Ronnie for so long is significant in my improvement. He can really see what's going right and what's going wrong and know how to fix it."

When asked what advice he has for others interested in singing or playing the piano he said "Piano takes a lot of muscle memory, so you really have to be committed to practicing. I promise you if you really commit to it you will be able to do things you didn't think were possible. For singing, every voice is different and you have to learn how to work with the amount of talent you have. You will have to break all your bad habits and re-learn good ones. It's a full body work-out. You'll be sweating when you're done. It's really hard and really fun!"

Tommy was involved in the musical Oklahoma at his school last year and is currently auditioning their production of Footloose. He is hoping to get the part of Reverend Shaw. We wish Tommy all the best in his musical endeavors and are certainly happy to have him as a student here at Potomac!