A Midwest native, Janene Sheldon is a vocalist, pianist, conductor, composer, and dancer/choreographer.  She has performed the roles of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, Maggie in A Chorus Line, Carrie in Carousel, Minnie Fay in Hello Dolly, Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Nella in Gianni Schicchi, Mrs. Gobineau in The Medium, Miss Pinkerton in The Old Maid and the Thief, and numerous others.  Dr. Sheldon has appeared as a soloist with the Lincoln, Nebr. Baroque Folk, the Nebraska-Minneosota Youth Chorale European Tour and has both soled in and conducted portions of Handel’s Messiah with orchestra. 

Her principal voice instructors include Donna Harler-Smith, Annabell Zikmund, Janet Funderburk and Carl Easterbrook, and she has performed in a master class with Marlena Malas.  Dr. Sheldon promotes and encourages performances of new music, having premiered composer Randall Snyder’s Winter Songs in 2002, and enjoys performing classical music as well as musical theater.

New to the Nebraska Wesleyan faculty in 2004, Dr. Janene Sheldon has also been teaching at Concordia University in Seward, NE since 1995, teaching Applied Voice, Diction, and Sight-Singing/Ear Training, and Theory and Voice for the annual summer music camp, as well as providing musical direction for productions of Into the Woods and Down in the Valley. She graduated from UNL in December 2003 with the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Voice Performance. At NWU she teaches Applied Voice.

She was Music and Worship Director for St. Mark’s United Methodist Church and Grace United Methodist Church and has done music direction and accompanying for the Lincoln Community Playhouse, Lincoln’s Pinewood Bowl, and the Lincoln Boys Choir.

A member of Pi Kappa Lambda, The National Association of Teachers of Singing, the College Music Society, Sigma Alpha Iota, and past member of MTNA/NMTA, ACDA and MENC, Dr. Sheldon’s voice students have won their categories at Nebraska State NATS competitions and placed in the top three in the West Central Regional NATS competition.  Dr. Sheldon has served as adjudicator, clinician, and choreographer throughout Nebraska, and was a Board of Trustees Scholar, Regents Scholar, and recipient of the Ida M. Vreeland Award for Composition in 1992, and was a presenter for the NATS Vocal Pedagogy Workshop at Westminster Choir College in 1996.  Sheldon has composed several song cycles, a woodwind quintet, pieces for solo piano, a few small choral works, and is currently working on her first opera.