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PHILOSOPHY
I’m interested in guiding singers toward easy, authentic, sustainable, dynamic, versatile, and pleasurable singing and performing.
I am committed to doing so via instruction that is (quoting Leon Thurman) “human-compatible": individualized, personal, supportive, light-hearted, patient, and respectful.
Like most private music teachers, I’m dedicated to guiding my students to teach themselves (as much as is practical). I regularly ask questions and propose experiments in the interest of cultivating curiosity and self-awareness, and hopefully fostering internal authority and autonomy in every singer. I’m interested in teaching with rather than at my students: being “a guide by the side” versus “a sage on the stage” (Alice Johnson).
Unlike any other voice teacher in the area, I'm a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method® of movement education. Besides this training equipping me with prescient theories about learning and teaching, as well as cognitive and (more importantly) experiential knowledge of anatomy and physiology, it's heightened my sensitivity and perception: I've become more aware of how a singer may be impeding their singing and performing, why they are hindering themselves, and how I might better lead them toward more functional and fulfilling choices.
I love (LOVE) singers and working with them. I'm bottomlessly fascinated by and insatiably curious about every single facet of singing and performing and the effective teaching of both.
Some fundaments of my teaching:
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Every aspect of singing (as well as acting) is movement; our bodies are profoundly interconnected and integrated — accessing mental/physical states that allow our entire body (mind included) to be free to fluidly move in any direction at any time is foundational to highly-functional singing.
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We humans emit sound to express ourselves. Choosing to sing to say something can be extraordinarily coordinating and satisfying.
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If you are singing a solo, you are also an actor. At best, every note/word we soloists sing is a reaction to something.