Classical Vocal Training
When I was a young singer, I spent my every waking hour trying to find about all of the aspects of singing I was presented with as I went through my training, first as an undergraduate in music, afterwards as a graduate student and graduate teaching assistant at Yale, and then as a fledgling opera singer in New York. I was not an easy pupil myself, in that I always needed to know "why?". This curiosity kept me busy for many years, trying to get to the bottom of the meanings of various aspects of the terminology of vocal pedagogy, and to know how I would present those issues in teaching.
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Luckily, I have had the benefit not only of years of research, but also of hundreds of hours of working with singers of varied nationalities, in many countries, at a variety of levels of talent and experience. My feeling remains the same: singers have the unique opportunity to express themselves fully in music by uniting the two halves of the brain, left and right: rationality, musicality, and intellect, with emotion, sound and aesthetics of music. To be a wonderful singer requires more than just a good voice: it requires a generosity of spirit to wish to share the riches of the inner self with the listening public, through the performance of great music. It is my privilege to guide singers on this rewarding journey.
To have the skills of the successful musical performer is different from knowing how to transmit those skills to someone else. After I had been teaching for a few months, I realised that the craft of teaching really had more to do with the people I was teaching than it had to do with the subject matter, important as this was. I wanted to improve in a professional way my communication skills. I therefore decided to train in counseling skills at the University of East Anglia and also inNeurolinguistic Programming (NLP), which I studied with its founder, Richard Bandler. These skills have helped me to find an accurate "label" for my preferred approach to teaching, which I would call "person-centred."
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Earlier in my career, in New York, I had studied an early version of the Pilates Method and the Feldenkrais Method. In the UK, I also studied the Alexander Technique, and afterward found a way of combining these "bodily-based" methods into a system I call "Body Work for Singers". I teach this method on courses and encourage my students who come for private lessons to explore other methods as well which encourage relaxation and body awareness.
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Crucial to the development of my teaching methods was the opportunity I had in New York to work with a respiratory therapist, the late Dr. Carl Stough, with whom I enrolled in an intensive course of lessons in Breathing Coordination for singing. Breathing Coordination provides a basis for the type of breathing required for bel canto singing, a method which for decades has proved effective in allowing beautiful voices to be produced effortlessly. The art of effective breath management is of supreme importance in singing. Breathing well and knowing how to use the breath once we start to sing are skills which anyone can learn, and it has been my pleasure to dedicate myself throughout my career as both singer and teacher to the acquisition of knowledge and practical methods of helping singers to conquer this important aspect of vocal technique.
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Online Lessons
From the early days of my transition from full-time performer to full-time teacher, it has been important to me to be available to my students, above and beyond the appointed lesson times. To assist travelling singers, and also when I too have been travelling for courses abroad, I have for many years used the available technology, first Skype (and now including Zoom and many other platforms) in order to keep in closer touch.
Now that the pandemic-induced crisis in singing has made online availability crucial for ongoing lessons, it has also made it possible for me to meet and work with new students until in-person meetings are possible.
Also when in-person lessons are ongoing, online sessions can serve to take a closer look at selected technical issues (such as tongue and jaw tension, breathing issues, posture, and so on) without the need for “social distancing”. Online work, in my experience, also offers a unique environment for exchange and development of musical ideas and artistry.