When dealing with anyone who doesn’t know he doesn’t know, it is very easy to be unintentionally insulting. To some extent the person on the receiving end of any information is an easy mark re having their ego bruised. Leading an individual into discovering what they don’t know (which could be the size of the Grand Canyon) is tricky business.

There are so many ways not to know that you don’t know. Vocal, musical, expressive, stylistic, physical, coordinative, professional………..each area has its own arena and parameters and each must be learned and respected as we progress up the ladder in the profession of singing or teaching singing (and remember, they are not the same.) All of us start out being ignorant (except perhaps true child prodigies) and must discover basic information along the way. Hopefully, teachers guide us to uncover what we don’t know but that’s not always the case. If you are a diplomat in government service before you go to a new country an expert will guide you in learning about the customs and protocol of that country so you can avoid making a mistake that could be a serious breach.

I have recently worked with a young man who is a singer/songwriter who has had some degree of success mostly on his own resources. He has had little formal musical training and has done almost no work on his voice. He was having vocal fatigue issues aggravated by reflux. Certainly he has a decent voice and is musical enough but he seemed to fancy himself to be both a great vocalist and an even better singer/songwriter. The idea that people actually work to get better at both of those things was unknown to him and the idea that maybe he wasn’t quite as accomplished as he thought had never occurred to him. Further, that some of what he was doing was adding to his vocal troubles had also not occurred to him. When asked to make modifications to what he did while he was singing and playing the piano, he was startled. The prospect of changing his own behavior seemed to him like an affront. Oh dear. I rarely encounter that attitude with high-level professionals. They assume they are seeing me for help, they listen and attempt to do what I ask because they also assume I have their (not my) best interests at heart. Especially at this point in my life and career I am interested only in being helpful. That’s enough.

Being willing to learn means that you must be humble enough to assume you have something to learn and that another person has more or better information than you. It’s surprising to know how many people who say they want to study do not have that attitude. Consequently, these folks don’t get anywhere in their learning process. If you really want to learn, even when advice comes at you from left field and seems like wouldn’t be at all what you thought you needed,  if you actually wanted to risk growing, you would have to try to assimilate that info and see how it works in use. In fact, sometimes the more unexpected the help is, the more valuable it can be. If you know that you don’t know you have no reason to resist training suggestions. You can happily examine the information, try it out for a while and see for yourself how things turn out.

If you are offended by new information about yourself, you should ask why that would be the case. If you already know, that information will roll right off. If you don’t know and don’t know you don’t, you can’t get anywhere with any information. Perhaps, some day, if you hang around long enough with people who have actual knowledge to share, you might wake up to your own ignorance, but that’s not a given. If you know you don’t know then admit it and learn.

We all have blind spots. We all have aspects of our personalities that are obvious to others and are not known to us at in any way. If you are able to criticize yourself it allows others to be able to offer criticism (but not nasty criticism) to you about yourself without trepidation. If no one ever tells you anything about yourself that might be construed as “good advice” you should ask yourself why not. Maybe you don’t know something about yourself that would be good to know.

You’ve had a very successful career as a voice teacher. Can you give us an overview of your work?

Over the 38 years since graduate school, I’ve maintained a large private studio alongside other teaching, such as adjunct college faculty positions and as a member of the senior voice/choral faculty at a large community music school.
I founded three arts education organizations, 1) The Washington Vocal Consortium, the United States’ first collegial voice teaching and mentoring team, 2) a 501-C-3 singing school for girls ages 11-18 called Singer’s Centre for Girls, and 3) a large women’s chorus which combined a voice class for elder singers with choral singing. I sustained two out of three of those organizations for almost 25 years.
Later on I began working as a singing voice specialist (and somehow understood a great deal about vocology before vocology was a common word,) for venues hosting professional musical theater touring companies, including the Broadway tour of The Color Purpleas it came through the Baltimore Hippodrome, and with the Arena Stage, Signature Theater, and Ford Theater. I began working as a voice teacher with recording artists from NYC, DC and Nashville in about 1997, which has been a whole education in itself!  Sometimes teachers ask me how I got this work. Honestly, it came about by building relationships with people and groups in my community, and then showing up, doing good work and not being an egotistical or defensive thorn.
While working with me I’ve had students cast in Broadway roles, sign contracts with Cirque du Soleil, Disney Tokyo and The Washington Opera Chorus, and have worked with children touring with Bella Thorne and Disney in feature films. I’ve also worked with those who cannot match pitch and with elder singers who felt their singing days were finished.
In addition to my private studio, I develop and teach online webinars, such as the recent “Reframing Menopause for Singers,” sponsored by Total Vocal Freedom. I am writing a book with Nancy Bos, a current VP of NATS, on the same topic. If you’d like to be on my mailing list for news about the book, blog posts, etc. sign up for my Museletter at CateFNStudios.com

You’ve had a successful career. What advice do you have for aspiring performers?

Each individual must decide what being successful means, otherwise they are going to constantly be feeling empty and attemptingto fill up with others’ definitions of success.
1 You must believe that you deserve to be heard and have something to communicate or share.
2 Develop a work ethic and mental focus that adjusts along the way to allow for life balance and your own changing needs and values.
3 Develop the capacity to break goals down into small steps and accomplish those small steps steadily.
4 Sir Lawrence Olivier said, “talent turned into craft is only 25% of what is needed to be successful.” The other components he listed were personal will, stamina/health and luck. For me, luck was being prepared when the opportunities came. It was learning to let go of things I had planned in order to allow unexpected outcomes that ended up being in perfect alignment with what I really wanted and needed.
5 Develop a great sense of humor, love and willingness to be vulnerable in your art because that is where the magic happens.
6 When people complimented me on having a world-class voice, I ignored them. When they criticized me and told me I was “sincere” but I would not win the Met competition, I ignored them.  Who cares? I have a fulltime job just being me and that’sthe same for any artist/educator. Actually, it’s two fulltime jobs. Add in children and relationships and you really don’t have time to use your energy dwelling on either criticism or praise.
You have a keen interest and wealth of knowledge in bodywork. Where did this interest come from?

This is a perfect example of how your weakness can become your greatest strength. An unusually severe health history forced me into seeking healing options outside the western medical community and the way medicine is practiced in the US. That included investigating a whole slew of alternative health care and somatic re-education practices, sometimes including them alongside western medicine when appropriate. “The Inner Game of Music,” was required reading in grad school and helped further my journey on how to focus mentally and cultivate kinaesthetic awareness. I started practicing yoga in 1985 and immediately felt its connections to physical health, spirituality and singing. Then I spent two years on tour performing in contemporary music and opera (lots of weird music with extended vocal techniques) and I adopted a routine using exercise bands for upper body strength. That, plus the yoga, walking and dancing for fun kept things running smoothly for a time.
After the first of the 8 abdominal surgeries, I “accidently” discovered “Maggie’s Woman’s Book” by Margaret Lettvin which I used for many years. It was a life-saving resource for abdominal recovery. I was one of the first NATS chapter presidents to bring in an Alexander Technique® teacher and Jeanie LoVetri to teach for our chapter back in 1993.  Few were teaching anything about somatic awareness in singing, sports or physical therapy at that time. The “web” was also not a resource time since it didn’t yet exist.
So because of personal experience over the years, I developed, studied, assimilated and went on to use all sorts of tools for somatic re-education. Although I am not certified in any of them, I’ve studied Alexander Technique®, Andover Education, Liz Koch’s Psoas Work, Feldenkrais Method and a whole host of other mind-body techniques. I experimented with them on my own body first, and then adapted them to meet the needs of each individual or group I worked with. About 10 years ago I began working with the concept that one’s unconscious beliefs and attitudes are energy that manifest in the body as emotional, mental or physical illness. For me, there’s been lot to uncover and heal in this lifetime!

When did you first meet Jeanie LoVetri and what has her work done for you?

I first met Jeanie at her Voice Foundation workshop in 1989. I resonated very deeply with her work and thought, ‘”thank god. She is somehow working like I work, only differently. I need to know more.”
I had a few telephone conversations with her but was busy with parenting, teaching, performing and continuing my own health research. Almost 25 years after I started teaching, I completed my Somatic Voicework™ teacher training. Somatic Voicework™ organized many things I had been trying to synthesize on my own for a long time, and her manner of working mirrored back to me the best of myself. But I also learned to hear differently, which was huge.
I’ve been pretty transparent about my situation with bi-lateral vocal fold paresis but have not been able to present the full story yet because I still find it overwhelming. Jeanie has been my chosen singing voice specialist since 2013 when I began working privately with her. The medical options presented to me at the time were unacceptable and the doctors and SLPs could not answer my questions which were very reasonable.
When you have lost your voice due to a mysterious neurological illness that medicine and endless testing cannot identify, and the vocal folds are pristine—no bowing, no atrophy, no cysts, no nodules or burst blood vessels, etc.–when you have lost your power source from the pelvic bowl, and rebuilt it over and over, you learn what rehabilitation really is at all levels –what it entails, and the pacing of how things need to unfold. There is no degree or certification or clinical working experience that can teach this. I consider it foundational to any effectiveness I have had as a teacher and healer. I am currently gingerly stepping out to discover what singing is now, even after a lifetime as a singer.

Please check out more from Cate Frazier-Neely:
Website: www.CateFNStudios.com
Book: “Meditations to Feed Christmas”
Journal of Singing Article: “Live vs. Recorded: Comparing Apples Oranges to Get Fruit Salad”
Other Social Media: Etsy, Instagram
Please also check out her Adam Neely’s YouTube channel about various music related topics: Click Here.

The entertainment industry. The music business. TV, theater, movies, recordings, the internet, public performances. All of them are venues for performers.

Musicians may or may not like the idea that they are in the entertainment industry. They would probably acknowledge they are in the music business. They probably don’t call themselves performers, but, of course, they are. The names that people give themselves are quite varied.

Actors includes actresses (a woman can be called an actor) but not the reverse. Singers might be actors as well as vocalists, but not always. Vocalists should be actors but they don’t always understand that. It also depends on what you think “acting” is. In theater, it isn’t about acting at all. Confused? It’s OK. You have to be in theater to understand.

People who are “celebrities” (meaning people who are famous — sometimes — as with the Kardashians, for being famous) don’t have to be anything other than famous. Silly? Yep. But very true. These days you can become “famous” by having lots of followers on YouTube.

Where, in all this, is there room for those who are shy? Reluctant? Retiring? People who are introverts? Should they be in any aspect of this world? No. But they are often there, surprisingly, and sometimes do quite well. How can you be in “show business” (or, the business that makes shows) or the entertainment industry, or be a musician, and/or a vocalist, or any other of the above listed jobs? and be uncomfortable? I do not know. I am not in any way introverted nor shy and I have never been a quiet, stay-at-home iconoclast. I have known others who were not extroverted who can be very uncomfortable in front of an audience but quite comfortable doing whatever they do.

The advice I would give someone who wants to be involved in the “entertainment industry” is simple: don’t get involved in any part of it that involves performing in a live venue in front of an audience. Work in a studio, or behind the scenes, or in some other aspect of the work like composing, writing, producing, or promoting the work you like or do. If you want to be a successful singer, find some “holy boldness.” ad go for it.