Yesterday I watched the film "Young at Heart". I found it almost unbearably moving. These choristers, with an average age of 80, live to sing, quite literally: singing may actually keeping them alive. Recent research tells us that the onset of Alzheimer's can be delayed with mental activity, especially through learning new skills.
There is something deeply touching about seeing this chorus convey the lyrics to rock-and-roll songs with such joy, such sincerity, such lack of artifice. Watching them perform to a jail-house audience who were enthralled, enthusiastic and at times, deeply moved, was really something.
I wept a lot watching this film. I was so often reminded of my father, who had a deep and abiding love for music. He was listening to violin music on the walkman I bought him until the day before he died. For him, his research and his lab (he was a scientist) kept him fighting against lung cancer. He was absolutely determined to beat it so that he could go on with his work. Sadly, he didn't.
I once gave a concert at a long-term care facility here in Toronto. I heard later from my mother, who was in the audience, that when I started to sing, there was a visible stir in the crowd. She said that some of those people, who were terribly sick, seemed to come back from the dead when they heard the sound of my voice.
I don't think that my singing was so special; I do think the human voice has an extraordinary power to stimulate, move, entertain. I believe it can even bring, for a moment, life to those who are ready to leave it.
I read somewhere that the "ee" vowel, correctly produced, is the foundation of singing. And therein lies the problem. I spent my whole career as a singer unhappy with my "ee" vowel. It was either too shallow, too "spread" or too dark. I never could get the balance right. The best singers seemed to produce it without spreading the mouth and with considerable space in the jaw. It was clearly "ee" but had all the beauty of "ah". One teacher advised me to feel my tongue at my upper teeth on both sides. That just made me uncomfortably tight. Dropping the jaw made the vowel more like "ih", too neutral, too heavy and too far from speech. Eventually I realized that for a good "ee", the one that can become the foundation of your singing, the jaw has to be released rather than dropped. It is the quality of the released opening that is important, not so much the quantity. Of utmost importance is the feeling of "hollowne...
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