In all my years of voice lessons — beginning at the age of 12, all the way through college — I don’t remember singing any “pop” songs. My repertoire was made up of foreign language arias, art songs, and show tunes. And while I’m a lot more lenient with my own students’ repertoire choices than my teachers were with mine, I like to maintain a little bit of tradition (no pun intended).

It doesn’t get much more traditional than Fiddler on the Roof, where the song “Far From the Home I Love” comes from. Emma did a beautiful job singing this song, and even used it as an audition piece for the musical in which she was recently cast.

Though many of my students would be perfectly content singing Taylor Swift and Greyson Chance songs exclusively, I love that they humor me by balancing them out with songs that won’t be on the radio anytime soon. The best is when they end up actually enjoying those songs, which is usually the case!