Alongside composing and producing, George Athanas works as a vocal coach. His work with singers spans two very different scales: the collective sound of a choir and the individual voice of a single student. Both share the same aim — helping singers understand their voices, interpret music with intention and perform with confidence.
Founding Crescendo Choir
In 2017, George founded Crescendo Choir in Syria. A choir is one of the most direct ways to bring people together through music, and one of the most demanding: many individual voices must learn to listen to one another closely enough to become a single ensemble.
The name itself is a musical term for a gradual increase in loudness — an apt image for an ensemble that grows step by step, as individual singers develop and the group learns to move together.
Crescendo Choir produced several music videos, which are available on YouTube. Preparing music for recording and video adds a further layer of discipline to choral work. Every entry, every dynamic change and every phrase ending becomes part of a permanent performance, and the ensemble must be prepared to deliver it consistently.
Developing an ensemble
Ensemble development begins with listening. Singers in a choir must hear their own part, the parts around them and the overall balance at the same time. Blend, tuning and shared phrasing do not come from individual excellence alone; they come from a group learning to adjust to itself.
That work also builds musical understanding. A choir singer learns how harmony is constructed from individual lines, how a single voice contributes to a chord, and how breathing and phrasing must be coordinated across the group. For many singers, this is where musical awareness deepens most — when they discover how their part fits into something larger.
The individual voice
Today, George also teaches vocal students privately and teaches at Digital Renaissance Music Institute. Individual training allows a different kind of attention. Each voice has its own range, colour, strengths and habits, and individual lessons make it possible to work on them directly.
Individual vocal training typically addresses both the physical and the musical side of singing: how the voice is produced and supported, and how it is used to communicate a song. The two are closely connected. Technical control gives a singer more choices; musical understanding helps them decide which choices to make.
Interpretation
A song is more than a sequence of correct notes. Interpretation — the way a singer shapes a phrase, colours a word or builds a performance from its first line to its last — is what makes a performance personal and convincing.
George’s own background gives him a wide frame of reference for this work. He sings in Arabic, French and English, has worked extensively in dubbing and voice-over, and has listened deeply across many musical traditions. That breadth is useful in the teaching room, where different songs, styles and languages call for different expressive approaches, and where singers benefit from understanding why a phrase is sung a certain way, not only how.
Musical confidence
Confidence is one of the less visible goals of vocal education, but one of the most important. Many singers have the ability to perform well but are held back by uncertainty — about their voice, their technique or their place in an ensemble.
Confidence grows from understanding. When singers know what their voice is doing and why, they can perform with greater freedom. In a choir, that confidence is shared: each singer relies on the others, and the ensemble grows stronger as individual voices grow more secure.
A continuing thread
From founding Crescendo Choir in 2017 to teaching privately and at Digital Renaissance Music Institute today, vocal education has remained a consistent thread in George Athanas’s work. It connects naturally with his other roles. As a composer and producer, he works with singers in the studio; as a vocal coach, he helps singers develop the skills and understanding they bring to that studio and to every stage they step onto.