Jeanie’s Blog

The world of opera is trying very hard not to fall apart. This has been so for quite some time but it seems that things have escalated and with the demise of NYCO, it can be seen by everyone that there is no great rush to restore this company or any other that might take ...

If the body is a hologram (and it is), then working with any part of it changes every part of it, whether that change is perceived or not. Of course, that idea can be expanded to include the universe, and certainly the globe. If any part of it is unhealthy, we all suffer for that. Does ...

If you are interested in inter-discipinary interchange, please come to the symposium at Oberlin at the end of January. Many minds sharing many ideas can only be a good thing. If you are thinking of attending, don’t wait to sign up. The hotel rooms reserved at a special rate will only be available till December 31. ...

Singing teachers forget that in the music industry, very few people care about vocal categories. Outside of classical music, and it could be argued that it is true there in some cases as well, the only criteria are: how well do you sing and how captivating are you when you do? The vocal categories that ...

Ohio State University has announced that it will be presenting a special Voice Forum on April 4-5. One of the topics listed is “Vocal Pedagogy of Commercial Styles”. How about that? When I started my course at Shenandoah, Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) as a genre was not yet recognized anywhere else. There was no formal course ...

On January 31, February 1 and 2, a break-through symposium is happening at Oberlin College Conservatory, once of the nation’s premier classical training colleges. During this three-day event the medical experts from the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic will join Oberlin faculty and me as we look at “new things” classical singers are being asked to do ...

You have to wonder why the wrong people are cast in major roles on in musicals. It isn’t new and it has always raised eyebrows but doesn’t go away. On Broadway, Sarah Jessica Parker (famous and powerful person of diminutive stature) played Winnifred the Woebegone in Once Upon A Mattress. This role was written for the ...

Many of you will have watched last evening’s Sound of Music on NBC starring Carrie Underwood, Stephen Moyer, Audra McDonald and Laura Benanti. Regardless of how you feel about the movie with Julie Andrews or the original play with Mary Martin, this production was a big deal, drawing 18 million viewers, making NBC very very happy. ...

I know quite a few people in New York City who came here to become successful professional singers and who, after long years of striving, did not actually accomplish that goal. Some of them left the city, some of them became other things (mostly therapists or teachers), some of them kept trying, off and on, ...

Here we are again, in “the holiday season”. We’ve just seen Thanksgiving and are in the middle of Hanukkah. Then there’s  Christmas, New Year’s and, if you celebrate them, Kwanzaa, and maybe “Festivus” (for the rest of us), created by a Seinfeld episode. We will be bombarded by mostly Christmas messages and music from now ...

Can you ever not “be yourself”? Can you be John Malkovich? You can always only be yourself. There is no other “self” to be. The image you have of your self, your identity, is a mental concept, and it is liquid. “That’s just my nature”, “that’s how I am”, “I’ve always been this way”, “I can’t ...

I have had occasions in a lesson where the student mentioned something that was calling his attention which seemed to me to be of little import. A student might say, “When I sing that sound, I feel a kind of funny pulling in my neck, up by the base of my skull.” In looking at ...

Does stiffness in the upper back make it harder to sing well? Does an issue with your knee interfere with vocal production? If your foot hurts, how can that make your singing different? The body is a whole. Everything affects everything. You may not notice it, you may be used to whatever is going on, but ...

What happens when something you work with that is always successful suddenly does not work? What do you do? When teaching functionally, using vocal/singing exercises with a clear knowledge of what they do and how they do it, it is possible to elicit a specific response from the vocal mechanism that is free and able to ...

How about considering singing as a sport? I think singing shows could do well to have a “voice over” of performances like they do at the Olympics, with the TV commentators. Commentator #1: OK, folks, this cadenza coming up, with all the melismas, is a 3.5 in difficulty. If she does it in one breath, she ...