Pauline Viardot-Garcia is my Muse. In her current incarnation at VOICETALK, she’s a warm orange-gold, ready for our Time, and very much alive even if she’s been dead since 1910. Her knowledge was transmitted through her student Anna Eugénie Schoen-René into our century. Not lost, not forgotten, or a Matter of Myth, you will find me writing about it in detail in the days ahead. But first I will be cleaning up links on the new website, closing down the old website, and traveling to Italy to sing with Serenades Choral Travel. What’s new at VOICETALK? You will notice that there isn’t a membership ..read more

The concert was unique and singular, inasmuch as it presented the whole professional strength of the college and a musical entertainment of the kind had never before been given by that institution. It was at the same time an occasion of introducing professionally to the community Signorina Tecla Vigna—the new teacher of singing lately arrived from Italy. In making her debut before a Cincinnati audience, the Signorina altogether left a favorable impression. In appearance, she is not altogether prepossessing, and she has rather angular features, though she is by no means devoid of a graceful sta ..read more

Ok, Historical Vocal Pedagogy nerds! Have you wanted to read Donald Paschke’s excellent translation and textual comparison (1840/1872) of Manuel Garcia’s A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing but believed it to be out of print? And an original copy was expensive? (I’ve seen originals going for 800 bucks.) I have news for you! You can obtain the first part of Garcia’s two-part treatise at Rockwell Blake’s site. Blake has worked with the author to release this edition, which won’t appear on the download page because it’s not public domain material. However, at 38 dollars, you will obtain a g ..read more

How you do find a great teacher? The one that’s right for you? My own story is a circuitous one. After teaching elementary and high school vocal music in the Midwest for a few years, I moved back east and found a private voice teacher in Philadelphia by the name of Florence Berggren. (How did I do that? By asking everyone I knew for their recommendation.) Berggren was in her 80s, had taught at Juilliard and Temple University, and counted Diana Soviero among her students. After six months of lessons where I sang nothing but French art songs, Berggren declared I would make a better conductor tha ..read more

Run Spot, Run! That’s what I think about when I think about the spot! And that, my Friends, is what it means to live in my brain. Words and thoughts take me to other places. In this case, my first-grade reader. The matter of “the spot” as it pertains to singing is what concerns us here. It’s found in William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti (1931). Search through it—which you can do after you download it and you will find four passages devoted to the spot. Here they are in an excerpted form with my comments. What helps me to feel" the start of vibration at t ..read more

Strange to say, but the other day I was reminded that I no longer crack my neck. Why? My spine is extended. What keeps it extended? My voice. If that sounds weird, it’s not really. Not when you understand how the ear, voice, and spine interact with each other. When I was a younger guy—pre-1999—I was always cracking my neck. But that changed after I underwent a course of listening training in Toronto at the Listening Centre in 1999—a course based on the work of Alfred Tomatis, a pioneer in Psychoacoustics. I had been singing with the New York City Opera for a decade when I went to Toronto and l ..read more

Tyson Deaton—a conductor cut out to run an opera company—is poised to publish a critical edition of the songs of Joseph Bologne de Saint-George—the very same gentleman featured in the movie Chevalier. Of all the musicians I am honored to know, Tyson Deaton is the most skilled, able, and knowledgeable about the voice; having been trained as a tenor under the famous bass Richard Best [a student of Margaret Harshaw], having sung professionally for several years, and having been trained as a collaborative pianist under the legendary Martin Katz. And that’s just for starters. The man knows more and ..read more

The short answer? Ten minutes at a time. Ok. Maybe 12-15 minutes, but no longer. Why? The brain is fried after 10 minutes, quality control is lost, and it’s a losing proposition to go on longer. Margaret Harshaw taught me this and motor-learning theory has borne out her approach as very effective. If you can commit to 3 ten-minute practice sessions a day you will get somewhere. Want to be really first-class about it? Commit to 5 ten-minute practice sessions. Practice is your main meal. Want dessert? Want to flirt with repertoire? Ok. You can do that only if you’ve gotten in your practice. If y ..read more

Mr. Bassini on Vocal Culture. Mr. Bassini, who has gained in a very short time so prominent a position as a Vocal Teacher of the Italian School, has consented to furnish us with a series of articles, (the first of which we publish this week,) on this interesting, and to all musical people, very important subject. Mr. Bassini, besides being a modest and accomplished gentleman, is a man of decided capacity; and possesses, perhaps, more definite and practical knowledge of the manner of eliciting and treating the human voice, than any other man in the city. Without wishing to obtrude his own views ..read more

Oh, Dr. Tomatis. You kill me. You’ve complicated my work in the studio—ever since I learned (and observed) that the right ear really does process higher frequencies faster than the left ear. I’m not making this up. The ears are not the same. They process sound differently—and with good reason. You know this if you’ve been reading VOICETALK for a long while: The singer who leads with the right ear sounds a lot different than one who leads with the left. The biggest difference? Ring, clarity, and projection of the voice. Add to that physical and mental ease and you have a very complex situation ..read more