In her fifth season at NCSA as Principal Vocal Coach of the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, Ms. Vanstory Ward is happy to return to her native North Carolina, where her first exposure to opera was an elementary school performance of The Barber of Seville presented by Grassroots Opera Company, the original creation of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. She has studied piano with Alice Thomas Scheld and Clemens Sandresky, as well as Professor Kenneth B. Lee and Dr. Libby Linn Gabriel during undergraduate study at Lenoir Rhyne College in Hickory, NC. From there, she went to New England Conservatory in Boston, MA, where she achieved the Master of Music degree in Vocal Accompanying and Coaching. After graduate study and a summer at the famed Tanglewood Music Festival, she remained in Boston for another twenty-six years on the faculties of both New England Conservatory and The Boston Conservatory. Other professional opera activities included Boston University, Boston Opera Company under the direction of Sarah Caldwell, Opera New England and The Children’s Opera Program; in addition, she has accompanied numerous vocal recitals in and around the Boston area. Summer festivals include Central City Opera (CO) and Wolf Trap Opera. During her last ten years in Boston, she was the auditions and rehearsal accompanist for the world-renowned Handel and Haydn Society, working under such conductors as Sir Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood and Grant Llewellyn. Under the tutelage of Terry Decima and John Moriarty, author of the famed book DICTION, the most popular textbook in this country for young singers, Ms. Vanstory Ward has become a specialist in foreign language diction. She teaches diction as of part of the training for the Fletcher Fellows as well as for undergraduate vocal majors.