Let’s face facts: I am a serious teacher for serious students. I was trained by serious teachers to be a serious singer, and I was a serious student. I sometimes shy away from owning this, wanting to appear fun and lighthearted, easy-going and cool. And I am  fun, lighthearted, and easy-going (cool, unfortunately impossible), but in appropriate amounts at appropriate times.

Why take voice lessons? I get asked this question frequently, especially with regards to the cost. Here are some of the reasons voice lessons are important and potentially life changing. (They certainly did all this for me!)

The process of singing: aka. the generally slow, usually painstaking, often beautiful, and sometimes exciting development of our voices so that they sound the way we want them to sound, do what we want them to do.

We must be open and flexible in our visions, with our student’s unique voices and personalities as our guides.

"Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."- Chesterton

I am always full of praise for my students’ work and progress, but I don’t thank them nearly as much as I should for all they have done and continue to do for me. This is for them (you)!

I am a product and an amalgam of all of these teachers. They are with me all the time, whispering in my ear, guiding me, reminding me, warning me… how to be and how not to be as a teacher to myself and others.

Thank you with all my heart.

Julian taught me to sing, to make music, to act, that it was ok to love Opera and Musical Theatre equally. He helped me become a better and stronger person, to take risks on stage and off. And, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, he taught me how to be a voice teacher. He was always professional but so personable. He shared his gifts as an artist and as a human being freely, with love and generosity. He somehow always made me feel like I was his colleague as well as his student; such a gift to a young aspiring singer.

Spoiler Alert! This story has an extremely happy ending!

I learned to teach every voice type, gender, vocal problem, temperament, and musical style.

I taught sopranos, mezzos, soprano belters, mezzo belters, sopranos how to belt and belters how to sing soprano; tenors, bari-tenors, baritones, basses, and baritones who wanted to be tenors; dancers who had never sung before and actors who had never sung before.

Sopranos get a bad rap in Musical Theatre today. This makes me mad. I confess, I am myself a soprano, but that is not the only reason it irks me. I’m not quite sure how it came to be that we sopranos are so maligned these days, but here are 10 reasons I think sopranos have the right and need to exist!

I had to take a vocal pedagogy class in graduate school. It was supposed to teach us how to teach a voice lesson. I confess I learned the exact opposite: I discovered what I never, ever wanted to do if I were ever to be a voice teacher, which ironically at the time (1996) I thought I would never be. (Hilarious, I know.)

He said he was very serious about pursing this and wanted to do whatever it took to be a successful singer.  And so we began his vocal training and it took quite a few months for him to be truly comfortable singing. But he fought through the nerves and his voice blossomed. In just a few years, he went from never having sung a note to booking the National Tour of A Chorus Line as the part of Greg!

You and you alone are responsible for the precious gift that is your singing voice. Protect and treasure it.

A voice lesson must be a safe place to put it all out there, the good, the bad, the ugly, the embarrassing. If it isn’t, you are with the wrong teacher. And if you are a Musical Theatre belter, or desire to be one, please find a teacher who understands (and preferably likes) that sound and style and how to teach it.

You could say Julie Andrews was my first voice teacher. No, I have never had the great good fortune to meet the marvelous Ms. Andrews, but I have been listening to her sing since I was a child and subsequently learned vast amounts about singing (and diction and acting) from her immense talent. So in honor of her 85th birthday this week, I will sing her praises.

On September 9, 1998, I got on a plane in Portland, Oregon headed to New York City, New York. I had a purse, a carry-on, and two large suitcases. I had a temporary place to stay in a women’s dorm on 34th Street. I had the possibility of two jobs. And a voice teacher.

I moved to New York City to study with a voice teacher. But not just any voice teacher, THE voice teacher: Cornelius L. Reid

After watching the film, I had a renewed understanding that devotion to people, ideas, and activities that you love is what life is all about.

In March of 1998, my life changed forever. This was when I first met Cornelius Reid, the man who profoundly changed my singing voice, the way I sang, the way I thought about singing, the way I taught, the way I thought about and viewed the world, musically and otherwise, gave me a career, a profession and a new passion.

I am especially proud of one of my students this week and I feel it necessary to brag about her publicly. However, I also want to tell her story (even as it continues to unfold) because I believe she is a perfect example of the extraordinary vocal transformation that can happen using Cornelius Reid’s vocal techniques and philosophies (as he taught them to me).

Functional listening is the cornerstone of the technique that I teach, taught to me by the late, great Cornelius Reid. This is the story of my introduction to both the maestro himself and the concept and transformative power on the singing voice of functional listening.