I am often asked, when a student comes for a first lesson, how long it will take before they can expect to feel a difference in the way they use their voice. My answer is that it depends on the individual and the amount of time one is prepared to practice each day. However, workingContinue reading “Muscles, Not Magic: The Physical Reality of Voice Training”
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The Drama School Secret for Everyday Life: Why Voice Lessons Aren’t Just for Actors
The skills honed in a drama school training are ones we all possess, and the desire to improve quality, stamina, and range is what prompts many non-performers to come for voice lessons. Through knowing our voice and understanding how it works, as well as what happens when it doesn’t, we also begin to understand moreContinue reading “The Drama School Secret for Everyday Life: Why Voice Lessons Aren’t Just for Actors”
Beyond Sounding Loud: The Hidden Responsibility of the Actor’s Voice
Historically, voice training began in the theatre. A voice teacher’s job traditionally focused on helping actors develop their voices to a level where they could meet the demands of a professional performing career. Its roots can be traced back to ancient Greek drama, where actors’ voices needed to be heard and understood in large open-airContinue reading “Beyond Sounding Loud: The Hidden Responsibility of the Actor’s 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 that make up the cycle were written. In anContinue reading “Programme note for a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise”
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”
Fellner Voice 