Departments
Voice
Courses Taught
PRF 204: Vocal Arts Workshop: Contemporary Vocals
Education
Master of Music, Jazz Studies - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Bachelor of Music, Jazz Studies - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ensembles
Olivia Flanigan Band — jazz/pop ensemble (bandleader and vocalist), 2010–present
Q&A
What is your hometown?
St. Charles, Illinois.
What are you passionate about outside of music?
I love running, reading, journaling, my cats, and spending time with my family.
Who were your major teachers?
My greatest teacher was Donnie Heitler, a pianist local to Urbana, IL. Working with him taught me so much about the interaction between vocalist/accompanist, about space and time in improvisation, and about life.
What question do you wish students would ask sooner rather than later?
What can music teach me about life? That's a question that I always come back to.
What was the defining moment when you decided to pursue music as a career?
I started college as an english major, and about a month in, I realized "what am I doing—I'm a musician!" and auditioned to transfer into music for my sophmore year.
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
I'd love to be a writer—whether that be writing a novel or being a journalist.
What is your daily practice routine?
Straw warm ups are key for me. I focus on warming up my whole voice, and also work on classical and jazz piano pieces.
From a music history perspective, what year and city are most important to you?
Too many to narrow down—so many amazing hot spots for jazz and pop music.
What is your unrealized project?
A book of essays or a novel.
What recordings can we hear you on?
I have two albums of original music on Bandcamp: Girl and It's Over.
Biography
Olivia Flanigan is a singer-songwriter, jazz and pop vocalist, pianist, and voice educator whose work bridges contemporary performance, pedagogy, and voice science. She holds both a Master of Music and Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies (Voice) from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Olivia’s private voice studio specializes in gender-affirming voice training alongside jazz and contemporary vocal styles. Her teaching combines evidence-based vocal pedagogy with creative approaches that foster stylistic versatility, musicianship, and authentic artistic expression. She has completed Somatic Voicework™: The LoVetri Method (Levels I–III), advanced training in gender-affirming voice work, and is a certified Vocologist through the Summer Vocology Institute at the University of Utah.
Olivia previously served as Director of Jazz Voice at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, a Berklee Global Partner institution, and taught jazz voice at the University of Illinois, where she directed vocal ensembles and mentored undergraduate and graduate singers. An active clinician, she has presented workshops on gender affirming voice techniques and pedagogy at universities and regional music education conferences across the U.S.
As a performer and recording artist, she has released two full-length albums, Girl (2021) and It’s Over (2025), and maintains an active performance career as a jazz vocalist and composer.