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It is a late November afternoon and the last hour or so of daylight. The outside air is damp and misty and traffic streams down the Charing Cross Road as I push open a door and enter a warm stuffy room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of second-hand books. An amiable silence imbuesContinue reading “Bookshop Walking”

A good way to work on the voice is to follow the natural progression of events that take place physically when we produce sound – We have a thought we want to communicate to someone. That thought generates a response in the diaphragm muscle which results in air being drawn into the lungs. The air,Continue reading “A Short Voice Practice Sequence”

During my second lesson with Evgenia, she gave me a volume of vocalises by a Belgian composer called Bernard Lütgen. A vocalise is a short performable composition, rather than an exercise, and is usually sung on vowels rather than text. Each vocalise deals with specific technical skills. The volume contained an article on voice trainingContinue reading “Professor Evgenia Sheveliova’s article on voice training”

Professor Evgenia Sheveliova was 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 2 -Lessons in Moscow with Professor Evgenia Sheveliova”

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 1 – Lessons on Schubert’s Winterreise with Esther Salaman”

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 about from our being fully present to the response of our physical body toContinue reading “The Feeling of What Happens…”

Resonance is the process by which the initial vibrations of our voice, generated by our vocal folds, are literally ‘re-sounded’ and amplified. In the same way a piano sound board or the belly of a violin or guitar reinforces and reverberates the initial sound produced by the strings of the instrument, the resonating spaces withinContinue reading “We are drawn to a voice which vibrates and which has resonance…”

Your voice is the main means by which you communicate your thoughts and opinions, wishes and desires. It plays a major part in the way you present yourself both professionally and socially. What can go wrong? Most of us are born knowing how to use our voices freely and easily. As babies and young children,Continue reading “Your Voice”

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 students, I often ask them what brings their voice into play. I point out that as they sit listening to me, there is noContinue reading “A bridge from your inner world…”