CHAPEL HILL – Anthony Dean “Tony” Griffey is using his speaking voice to help young singers tap their inner voices.

The Grammy Award-winning High Point vocalist who performs mostly opera throughout the world is an artist-in-residence for 2009-10 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As his own performance schedule allows, he teaches and coaches voice students and gives master classes open to the public. One was held Monday in a packed Hill Hall Auditorium.

In the class, four students, all senior voice majors at Carolina, each performed a short piece accompanied only by piano. After each performance, Griffey worked with the student on improving his or her presentation, and several themes emerged: communication, storytelling and honesty in expressing feelings.

Griffey served almost as a therapist, asking each student, “How did you feel about that?” Most said they were nervous on stage and believed the tension showed in their singing. He made it clear that nerves are normal, and he helped each find a way to overcome them.

“Why do we get nervous?” he asked after tenor John Charles Clark of Hickory performed a Mozart aria in German. “It’s very tough not to be. As a singer, we don’t pull our instruments out of a case. We walk around with it 24-7.”

He asked Clark if he danced. Some, Clark said, so Griffey instructed Clark to bound around the stage as he sang. Griffey prodded Clark to move increasingly more energetically.

“Do some interpretive dance. Feel comfortable in your body. Move. Move,” Griffey said as he shadowed Clark’s movements. As Clark jumped around and turned red in the face, the tension seemed to leave his body.

Griffey next worked with Clare FitzGerald, a soprano from Raleigh, on bringing meaning and emotion to the words she sang. He instructed her to sing her aria using a nonsense syllable (“yang”). Then he held a hand mirror in front of her mouth and told her to stick her tongue out farther while singing. All the while, Griffey, behind the mirror, stuck his tongue out at the appropriate points.

“Sometimes (both exercises) bring the voice out here instead of in your head. ... If you were backstage at the Met you’d hear all sorts of exercises,” he said.

“The truth of the matter is that I kept my individuality,” he said. “It was Beverly Johnson (a teacher) who helped me get in my body. I’m a big guy; I’m 6-4, and I feel comfortable in my body.

“Beautiful voices are a dime a dozen, but it’s what you do with it.”

Zachary Ballard, a baritone from Mooresville, said he felt too inside himself, so Griffey worked with him on telling the story of the song. He instructed Ballard to sing the French piece using English.

“What is singing?” Griffey said. “It’s an extension of speech, so I really want to hear those words. Take it off the page and communicate. ... I wasn’t good at speaking when I was little. I was shy – many singers are – so I would sing what I wanted to say. ...

“It’s about being honest. Someone asked me last week, ‘How do you sing things you don’t feel?’ You have to go out and have life experiences you can tap into.”

By the time Catherine Park, a soprano from Raleigh, took the stage, she’d incorporated many of the previous lessons and earned a “pretty awesome” from Griffey, who nonetheless followed her around the stage prompting her to “ release ... stay connected ... take us on the journey with you ... connect with us.”

Griffey, who studied at The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music and the Metropolitan Opera, makes it a point never to demonstrate how to sing. Too often when he was a student, instructors used master classes as an opportunities to show off their vocal skills.

“I try to put it into words and give them a good vocabulary on what they should do,” he said.

He also doesn’t coach students during master classes on technical aspects because he believes that by the time vocalists get on stage, technique should be in their muscle memory, thus allowing them to concentrate on communicating and telling a story.

He tells students some of his story and encourages them to ask questions so they might learn about the life of a professional vocalist.

“A big thing for my teaching is why we sing and what it’s all about,” he said.

Griffey made it a point Monday to let students on stage and in the audience know that he, too, is still a student and still learning.

“I’m always open. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m always open.”