Voice and Opera Training

Many of the things we are told as children stay with us our entire lives, whether or not they are true. Were you told you can't sing? Do you still believe it? Do you wish you  could  sing? Joel Katz believes you can learn to sing as an adult. He helps adults explore their musical possibilities. "It is a conviction of mine that development in later life has a lot to do with revisiting situations from early life that left us incomplete or unsatisfied," Katz writes in his blog:  Voice and Opera Training Katz teaches voice in Toronto and has an impressive list of accomplishments. I'm even more impressed that he takes the time to encourage those of us who are not great singers. You can learn more about Katz on his website   From About.com a New York Times Company

As a voice teacher, primarily of adults, I meet a lot of people who have been told at some point (usually early on) that they cannot sing, have no talent, etc. This type of person has made a decision to confront early life experience of a negative kind to find out what is actually possible. We know from many studies that how you understand failure in music is a powerful predictor of whether you stay with it or give it up. Research has shown that those students who attribute failure to lack of ability tend to give up; those that attribute it to lack of effort stay with it. It would be interesting to know how many of those students who gave up music come back to it as adult learners.   It is a conviction of mine that development in later life has a lot to do with revisiting situations from early life that left us incomplete or unsatisfied. For example, working out at the gym leaves me with a particular sense of accomplishment; the gym was the scene of much trauma and humiliation as a...

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 w...

Singing is hard to teach and confusing to learn. I think a lot of this has to do with our need as singers to balance opposing elements. After all, we are trying to use highly contracted vocal cords within an expanded throat; a contraction within an expansion. I have often found myself in a lesson, wondering at how such contradictory advice can come out of my own mouth. “Up and over” I say, only to follow up a moment later with, “No, you’re lifting!”  Related to this is “lift the palate…. But don’t go up!” This clearly needs a bit more unpacking to make sense. I think it comes down to imaginative work as opposed to physical work. Physically lifting the palate is less effective than feeling your palate is high: best of all may be to “see” the palate high as a kind of visualization of inner space. You want the singer to imagine that the voice is lifted and the palate is high, but not to physically lift anything to do it. Cognitively speaking, muscularly lifting the palate would i...

One of the best movies I have seen recently is the animated feature, Inside Out. Actually, it brought me to tears more than once. The authors have created a cartoon that is based on modern cognitive psychology, in particular, modern theories of personality, memory formation and retrieval, cognitive development and emotional function.  I was particularly touched to see how, in the control room of the mind of an 11 year old girl, musical memory has a privileged route to consciousness. No matter who you are, where you are, or what you are doing, a musical thought can find its way into your mind, imbued with all the emotional significance that has accrued to it through your experience.   I was touched to think what a delight and what a privilege it is to study music as a psychological phenomenon, and to attempt to add to our understanding of its’ unique function in human mental and emotional life. Oh, and by the way, birds do it too! http://esciencecommons.blogspot.ca/2012/12/bird...

I have never been a great one for taking music exams. I never enrolled in the Kiwanis Festivals (although I have adjudicated it in later life), and I took only one set of RCM exams. As an undergraduate, I had to deal with a feeling of constantly being judged and graded for my performance ability, and I think it increased my nervousness and lack of confidence. My real progress as a singer was largely outside of school, in lessons with master teachers and through my own constantly self-evaluative practice. Performing itself, compared to exams or auditions, was relative freedom.   My response to discouraging assessment has usually been to turn away from sources of external validation.  For example, I entered a competition when I was in my early 20’s, where I advanced to the semi-finals, but did not win. I was given a detailed adjudication to read. It went into my files. Twenty years later, I had to overcome my own feelings of shame at not having succeeded in order to re...

In the summer of 2011, when I turned 59, I began a master’s degree. I had been thinking of it off and on for more than 15 years. In 1994, when I got back to Toronto from the Phantom of the Opera tour, I considered getting a master’s in performance under Lois Marshall, an artist whom I adored. Something held me back. Perhaps it was a fear of studying under my own professional colleagues, perhaps it was a fear of the state of my transcripts: at any rate, I never filled out the forms. By 2001, I was thinking again thinking of post graduate study. I had in the intervening years turned from performing to teaching, having had some success coaching advanced singers in Europe. This time, I thought of a master’s in education. I got as far as downloading the application and writing away for my transcripts. When my transcripts arrived, I tried to convert the letter grades into the standard 4 point system. I was overcome with shame. Confronting that trail of successes, failures and incompletes...