Adieu to AMDA 2.0

In March of 2021, a wildly unexpected event occurred: I was asked to teach virtual voice lessons for AMDA NY, the school I had taught at in NYC from 1998-2011. Because of the Pandemic, voice lessons were online only, and therefore I could teach from the comfort of my South Carolina living room! I was thrilled: not only was it a financial boon, but it was also great for me professionally and personally as I had missed teaching college age students. But as of this week, my second tenure at AMDA 2.0 as I like to call it, has come to an end. 

Here’s what I learned this time around: (See below for my ruminations on AMDA 1.0, 1998-2011)

1.      College students are really not that different from high school students except they do their own laundry.

2.      At 48-50 years old, I am WAY more laid back in my approach than I was the first time around at age 25-37.

3.      I care SO MUCH MORE about PROCESS and PROGRESS than product these days. Partially because I know that I can’t want it more than the student and I can’t do it for them. All I can do is my best and they have to take it from there…

4.      Teaching online is very effective, but I did miss seeing my students perform in their demos and showcases. You learn so much from watching them do their thing in front of an audience.

5.      My living room voice studio is a much more comfortable working environment than the airless room I used to teach in.

6.      We are not doing our students any favors by being too lenient and calling it “kindness”. It is not kind to not correct mistakes. It is not kind to mislead a student with false praise. It is not kind to allow them to sing songs that are too hard for them and watch them flail and fail.

7.     I have two awesome colleagues and friends in Kristine Kalina and Jeff Caldwell.

My heartfelt thanks to those students who muddled along with me through the Zoom experience and let me help them find their unique and beautiful voices. Hopefully one day we’ll meet IN PERSON!

7 Things I Learned Working at AMDA NY (1998-2011)

1.     Before starting teaching voice at AMDA in 1998, I would have said my knowledge of Musical Theatre was fairly comprehensive. How terribly wrong I was. There are so many wonderful musicals out there, and so many of them have been unjustly forgotten and/or sadly discarded. I discovered fabulous songs that have rarely seen the light of day since they were written. (Of course, I also learned of obscure musicals and rejected songs that really should stay that way.) This is why I am especially keen on exposing my students to the full scope of Musical Theatre repertoire, not just the few most popular of the current moment.

2.     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.

·       I worked with smokers and those trying to quit, acid reflux sufferers, kids with nodes, allergies, weak voices that needed strengthening and strong voices that needed refining. Head voice, chest voice, mixing, belting: you name it, I taught it. 

·       I taught classical, rock, pop, famous and obscure, ballad and patter; from Bach to Bacharach, Gershwin to Guettel, and Mozart to Miranda.

·       I taught the laid back, the high strung, the intelligent, the dumb; silly and serious, humble and arrogant, lazy and hard-working, musicians and non.

·       I taught students to be brave, to be calm, to be patient, to be hopeful.

3.     Far too often in the Musical Theatre world (heck, any visual medium) what you look like often matters way more than what you sound like.

·       This was, and is, very difficult for me to accept. I still fight against it. It’s really quite absurd since voice type, vocal range, tonal color/weight do NOT necessarily correspond to outward physical attributes. Just because someone might “look like” a tenor, doesn’t mean their voice, their physical vocal instrument, will follow suit. And what does that even mean anyway? What does a “tenor” look like? A soprano? A baritone? A belter? Every voice type comes in all shapes and sizes, colors and personalities. The diversity of humanity is what makes life interesting!

4.     You cannot teach instinct for the art form. You can teach everything else, but not that. You either have it, or you don’t.

5.     However, all the talent in the world will not get you to where you want to go. You must have a strong work ethic, patience and persistence!  

6.     Dancing is everything in Musical Theatre these days. If you can dance, you are halfway there. If you can dance well and sing decently, you will at least get a callback. If you are an extraordinary singer and can’t dance… learn to dance.

7.     I learned that everyone has a story, everyone is scared of something, everyone has a dream, and everyone deserves to give those dreams their best shot.