Kelly Bidstrup Graham
“The expert in anything was once a beginner.”
About Kelly
She started her career as a private piano and voice teacher out of her parents’ home, then transitioned into classroom teaching after she finished her bachelor’s. At the Early College of Arvada, she founded and grew their Arts at ECA program & the TimberGriffen Theater Company. In 2019, her theater program was 1 of 10 schools nationally that were selected for the Razzle Dazzle award, which granted the program free rights and licensing to produce Chicago, the High School Edition. The program also received exclusive rights to produce an original adaptation of Coraline into a play, and during COVID, received permissions to do Noises Off as a one-night-only live-streamed virtual production in the summer of 2020.
Following those successes, in 2021 her program, renamed Rise Up Theater Co., was also given permission to take an original musical called Prodigy, by Jenny Stafford & William Oosthuyse and produce it as a feature-length film. The soundtrack she recorded and produced is available to listen to on YouTube.
During her classroom teaching career, she also worked as a music director for Backstory Theatre Co. & Equinox Theatre Co. She earned a Broadway World nomination for Best Music Direction in 2019 for her regional theater production of Sweeney Todd. In 2020, she also began grad school at CU Boulder, where she studied theater and performance studies, with her graduate thesis work being a series of research interviews with industry professional music directors on best practices for music direction, particularly as it pertains to musical theater.
Kelly’s Instructional Approach
Kelly’s approach to teaching is student-driven; whatever your reason for wanting to learn and grow as a musician is, she’s here for it and ready to coach. She likes to think of ongoing private music lessons in sort of two intertwining tracks, one track is the – “making music because is fun and healing and good for us as humans”, and the second is the – “learning and polishing this piece will get me ______________ (ex. ready for an audition, prepared for a performance, or into a program or ensemble…). No matter where you fall on those tracks, she is thrilled to help move you forward.
Practice Tips
One of her best practice techniques, particularly for singing, is recording yourself and listening/watching back. In that process, you can better analyze what issues might be happening and how they impact performance, for example, you might realize that the breathing is wrong and that’s why you can’t hit a particular note or that the vowel shape is off and that’s making the note flat.
Favorite Tunes
Folk – Mumford & Sons or SHEL
Pop Punk: Bowling for Soup
Classical: Tchaikovsky or Clara Schumann
Musical Theater: Come from Away
Alternative: La Roux
