Fellner Voice

Programme Note for a Performance of Schubert’s Winterreise Schubert’s Winterreise was composed in 1827 one year before his death at the age of 31. In 1822, Schubert contracted syphilis – an incurable disease at the time – and it was against a background of declining health as well as depression that the twenty-four songs thatContinue reading

The feeling of what happens…

The Feeling of What Happens is the title of a book by the Portuguese-American neuroscientist Antonio Domasio. In this book he examines the question of where our feelings come from and what it means to be conscious. Consciousness, he believes, comes from our being fully present to the response of our physical body to whateverContinue reading “The feeling of what happens…”

Remembering my Teacher -Lessons in Moscow with Professor Evgenia Sheveliova

Professor Evgenia Sheveliova is the second of the two teachers I’ve studied with whose ideas about voice have made the biggest impact on the way I sing and teach. We met in Moscow, during the summer of 2008, and our association came about rather unexpectedly. I was not looking for a singing teacher at theContinue reading “Remembering my Teacher -Lessons in Moscow with Professor Evgenia Sheveliova”

Remembering my teacher – Lessons on Schubert’s Winterreise with Esther Salaman

My blog posts until now, have focussed on different aspects of voice technique. At the beginning of the national lockdown this year, before discovering the wonders of Zoom and Skype teaching, I realised, as I cancelled my lessons and began to sink into gloom, how teaching and working with the voice becomes a way ofContinue reading “Remembering my teacher – Lessons on Schubert’s Winterreise with Esther Salaman”

We are drawn to a voice which vibrates and which has resonance…

In a documentary film about her work (Where Words Prevail, 2005), the great voice teacher Cicely Berry said: “we are drawn to a voice which vibrates and which has resonance”. Resonance is the process through which the initial vibrations of our voice, created by our vocal folds, are literally ‘re-sounded’ and amplified. In the sameContinue reading “We are drawn to a voice which vibrates and which has resonance…”

A Bridge from Your Inner World

As an instrument, the human voice is unique in that it is alive and intimately bound to our whole physical and psychological being. When I start teaching a new group of acting students, I often ask them what brings their voice into play. I point out that as they sit listening to me, there isContinue reading “A Bridge from Your Inner World”