Robert M. Wallace, 53, singer and instructor

Robert M. Wallace, 53, of Manayunk, a classical-music singer and teacher, died of leukemia Jan. 28 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

A memorial service and concert are planned for 5:30 p.m. today at the Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce St. in Center City, where friends may call after 4:30.

Mr. Wallace was on the faculty of the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia from 1985 until this year, said Robert Capanna, its executive director. He was "a real fixture in the voice department," Capanna said.

Mr. Wallace taught at two of Settlement's six locations, in West Philadelphia and in Jenkintown.

"Rob was a very well-trained, serious singer," Capanna said, "with lots of opera and oratorio experience."

At Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Mr. Wallace was a voice teacher and an adjunct professor of music from 1999 until last fall, college spokesman Mike Bruckner said.

Mr. Wallace's sister, Helen Ralston, a soprano who has performed locally and in New York, recalled that she and her brother had begun singing only as teenagers. "We got a guitar," she said, "and learned to play pop songs."

But by 1979, she said, Mr. Wallace was leading the congregation in hymns during a Mass in Washington celebrated by Pope John Paul II.

Born in Baltimore and raised in Towson, Md., he attended what are now McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. He graduated in 1984 from the Academy of Vocal Arts.

Mr. Wallace was a soloist at First United Methodist Church of Germantown from 1980 to 1985, Ardmore Presbyterian Church from 1985 to 1990, Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge from 1990, and St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh from 1994 to 2004, said his longtime partner, John S. Kennedy.

Mr. Wallace sang in the 1970s with the Baltimore Opera Company and in the 1980s with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Savoy Company of Philadelphia, and the Trenton Civic Opera, Kennedy said.

In 1985, he said, Mr. Wallace was a finalist in the Luciano Pavarotti vocal competition in Philadelphia.

In 1987, an Inquirer reviewer complimented Mr. Wallace for his "especially fine delivery" in Antonio Salieri's 1809 Mass in B flat, performed by Pennsylvania Pro Musica at Old Christ Church.

Since 1986, when musical work permitted, he and Kennedy had "rehabbed four houses, three here in Manayunk and one in Milton, Del.," Kennedy said.

Besides his sister and Kennedy, Mr. Wallace is survived by his parents, John and Pamela; a brother, Galen; and several nieces and nephews.