Curated VOICETALK
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
1w ago
There is a new webpage at the Shigo Voice Studio: Curated VOICETALK. What is curated VOICETALK? A collection of VOICETALK blogs from 2009-2022 rich with information and singing instruction. If you’ve read any books from the 20th century, you will have encountered a disclaimer that states: "You can’t learn to sing from a book.” It’s true. It’s also true that to know something, you have to know something. Autodidact Delight. As the founding editor of VOICEPRINTS—The Official Journal of the New York Singing Teachers Association—I aimed for its articles to be helpful. By this, I mean they needed t ..read more
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The Heart of the Garcia Method
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
2w ago
A very interesting article was published in the Journal of Singing last year. It addressed Anna Eugénie Schoen-René's legacy by featuring information gleaned from a particular archive.[1] Curiously, it did not give the reader what this writer found in that same archive in 1997—the heart of the Garcia method, which has never been revealed until now. Princeton, 1985 “Alright. Slap your cords together like that!” Margaret Harshaw hurled at me after I sang the second high E-flat of a Bach aria in a practice room at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. “How many lessons have you had ..read more
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The What and How of Vocal Culture
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
1M ago
Frances Roena Medini (1851-1925) Dr. Mary Augusta Brown Girard was not the only one to publish a book-length account of her studies with Francesco Lamperti a year after his death in 1892. The other person was Frances Roena Medini. Becoming Medini Prima donna, suffragette, voice teacher, poet, and friend to Amercia’s great bard Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Madam Medini was known as Frankie Miller back in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she was born to Scottish parents in 1851, the Italianization and creation of her stage name taking place after two years of study in Italy with Francesco Lamperti and Lu ..read more
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Vocal Art: How To Tune a Voice and Make It a Beautiful Instrument
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
2M ago
Titles containing first-hand accounts of study with great singing masters—in this case Francesco Lamperti—are rare. I know. I’ve searched high and low for them. This is one. Dr. Mary Augusta Brown Girard (1836-1926) Mary Augusta Brown Girard was born in 1836 to William and Martha Gage in Knox, New York, a town in Albany County just west of Albany, New York, and died in San Francisco, California, in 1926, having married twice: first to Augustus Brown in 1867 when she was 30—and with whom she had a son who died at the age of nine—then to Frank Girard. Girard was fifty-seven when she published V ..read more
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Tech Up and Sing
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
2M ago
Yesterday, I gave a workshop on the Trill that was designed for four participants. Oddly enough, because of very curious circumstances, I ended up giving the workshop to one participant—a wonderful soprano who has been working with me for the last couple of months. And she got it—the Trill that is—being able to accomplish it in under an hour. My workshop for one started on Zoom, but Zoom didn’t perform very well—my student’s voice cut out the whole time—so we moved over to FarPlay—my preferred platform—which has superior audio quality. This and other unfortunate experiences have brought me to ..read more
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Happy New Year
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
3M ago
I sometimes wonder what New Year’s Eve for the Garcias and the Lampertis teachers was like. Did they look back and forward on days like today? Did they know their place in the grand scheme of things? Did they stay up to watch fireworks as I will in Central Park? Did they even have fireworks? Or did they go to bed early as I know some do if only to start afresh the next morning at 5 am to catch the worm? I am teaching shortly after I post this blog for a few hours, then will be making dinner for two, then will await midnight while listening to WQXR, New York City’s classical radio station—then ..read more
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The Garcia School: Thelma Votipka
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
4M ago
Thelma Votipka (1906-1972), who sang 1,422 performances with the Metropolitan Opera, was a student of Anna Schoen-René, the latter carrying the teachings of Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Manuel Garcia into the 20th century. Known to her friends as Tippy—Votipka famously sang the high B flat for Maria Callas during the offstage choral cantata in Act 2 of Puccini’s Tosca. What was her voice like? The YouTube video below will give you an excellent impression. Now, if you want to go deeper and understand more about the effect of the vocal technique of the Garcias and the teaching of Anna Schoen-Rene ..read more
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Reflections on Media
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
4M ago
It took a nudge from my friend Gary Lizardo—a much-experienced stage actor and singer—to make it happen: the creation of a Media page, which I completed after diving into a box of old photos. Funny that. Most of my photos were taken before the advent of the iPhone, which was new to me in 2010-11—the end of my tenure at NYCO. I started snapping production photos with it, both on and off stage. Well, sort of. I didn’t snap photos during a performance but did after the curtain came down as well as in rehearsal, my iPhone 4 taking really good photos (a tech guy at the Apple Store told me why once ..read more
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Learning to Sing From a Book
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
5M ago
You may be surprised to hear the man who has a download page with over 200 texts tell you that you can’t learn to sing from a book. Ok. That’s not entirely accurate. That same man might tell you—in the words of the famous vocal pedagogue Margaret Harshaw—that to learn to sing from a book: ”You have to know something to know something.” This means you’ve been around the block (and hopefully not gotten lost) more than a few times. That man is me—case in point. I taught myself to trill after reading a letter written by Jenny Lind, then put what I gleaned from Lind together with several other piec ..read more
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Beginnings
Shigo Voice Studio
by Daniel Shigo
8M ago
I have 14 black and white composition notebooks full of research. They date from 1990-2001. Open them up and you find a masterclass given by Joan Sutherland at Julliard, information on Hermann Klein that ended up in Hidden in Plain Sight: The Hermann Klein Phono-Vocal Method Based upon the Famous School of Manuel Garcia, notes from a book on bel canto that was in Adolf Hitler’s library, my experience with Tomatis’ listening training, personages like Frederic Root, Luisa Tetrazinni, Sterling Mackinlay, Lucie Manén, Gergory Hast, Edmund Myer, Charles Battaille, Elster Kay, Ida Franca ..read more
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