The LoVetri Institute

Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method

Posts Placeholder

Creating Gender Liberatory Singing Spaces

By

A Transgender Voice Teacher’s Recommendations for Working with Transgender Singers

By Eli Conley

I’ve talked to many voice teachers in recent years who are seeking guidance about how to work with transgender and non-binary singers.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I’m a private voice teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a transgender man who has worked with many transgender and non-binary voice students. I also lead community singing classes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people and allies. I’ve sung in many choirs, and taken voice lessons from some wonderful teachers. I’m also a performing singer-songwriter who records and tours regularly.

All of these experiences have led me to believe that voice teachers, choir directors, and other voice professionals can do a lot to shift the culture of singing spaces, transforming them from spaces that are often unintentionally hostile to transgender and non-binary singers into spaces of support and gender liberation.

I was inspired to write this article after a discussion about working with transgender singers came up on an online listserv for teachers trained in Somatic Voicework™, the body-based voice training program created by Jeanie LoVetri.

 One of the things I love about Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method is that Jeanie LoVetri teaches that to achieve a healthy, versatile voice, singers of all genders and genres of music must strengthen both their head and chest registers, and learn to blend them together into a coordinated mix in the middle voice. Watching her teach a cisgender baritone to access his head register for the first time in order to make his whole voice stronger made so much sense to me as a transgender singer. I had to burst open the gender boxes that people placed on me as a young person, and I know the emotional and vocal freedom that has come from that. Why should singers let gender expectations hold them back from using the full range of their voices? [Read more…] about Creating Gender Liberatory Singing Spaces

Off to Brazil, U.S. Teaching Weekend Tour & LoVetri Institute Registration is LIVE!

By

Photographed: Jeanie LoVetri with Candice Donehoo Pullom
We are excited to be announcing our 2018 LoVetri Institute for Somatic Voicework™ in residence at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, from July 21 through 29. Registration is now live! All three levels will be presented and there will be the first-ever Vocal Health Intensive for graduates of Level III (prior to 2018) presented by a leading voice research scientist and expert, Dr. Claudio Milstein, Director of the Voice Centre at the Head and Neck Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. This affiliation with one of the great medical centers in the USA is a honor and delight for the LoVetri Institute. Dr. Milstein will be creating an annual program specifically for Somatic Voicework™ teachers to give them a greater awareness to appropriately address vocal health issues. We also have other world-class experts in vocal health and vocal performance.
Photographed Below: Dr. Claudio Milstein with a patient, photo courtesy of Gretchen Cuda for NPR
Registration for Dr. Milstein’s course will be available in the coming weeks and will be announced in a future newsletter.

The following is our 2018 Guest Faculty. Dr. H. Steven Sims, laryngologist at the University of Illinois Chicago Institute for Voice Care, will be our medical lecturer in Level III. Dr. Sims has treated many professional voice users and is very “singing voice” knowledgeable. His three-hour lecture will give practical information that all teachers of singing and singers need to help stay healthy. He will be joined in Ohio by his colleague at the Voice Care Institute, Jan Potter Reed, a Speech Language Pathologist specializing in voice. She will be lecturing on vocal health in Level I. Also in Level III, we will be joined by Tom Murray , who is returning by popular demand, to do another master class series on Broadway auditions with our participants. Tom is currently Music Director for Broadway’s Anastasia and brings years of experience about
Broadway singing and performing that he generously shares with our participants. Dr. Trineice Robinson-Martin (http://www.drtrineice.com/index.html) , author, singer and Gospel vocal pedagogy expert, will do a clinic and master class with participants on jazz, blues, and gospel. Our bodywork experts are Suzan Postel (joining us in Level I) and Peter Shor (joining us in Level II). Suzan is a Pilates Instructor, singer, dancer, and broadway veteran. Peter is a massage therapist, artist and musician with years of study in many bodywork disciplines. Both have been associated with Somatic Voicework™ for many years.

Photographed Above: Dr. H. Steven Sims
Photographed Below: Somatic Voicework™ Faculty, Michelle Rosen, Jeff Costello, Besty Fiedler
Assisting Jeanie through all three levels is Michelle Rosen, Senior Faculty, who teaches at NYU Tisch, at The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and privately. She is also former faculty at Rider University in their Music Theater degree program. The Associate Faculty is Betsy Fiedler from Massachusetts, who teaches at college, in local schools, at is an active church musician, soloist and choral conductor. She also has a private practice. Jeff Costello is our Audio Engineer and will presenting as well as be Assistant Faculty. Benjamin Czarnota will again be returning as Faculty Liaison. They will be joined by for breakouts by Assistant Faculty Leischen Moore from Tacoma, Davin Youngs from Chicago, Amanda Chmela from New York, and other Somatic Voicework™ teachers to be announced.
This gathering of experts, who will be teaching people from all over the USA and the world, will be offering a wealth of information that cannot be obtained anywhere else at one time (just 9 days!) and in one place and for this very reasonable fee. Other courses, with fewer experts and less content, are more expensive. Our reasonable fee makes it accessible for the broadest audience to be able to attend. The number of spaces available, however, due to last year’s overflow crowd, will be limited and we urge anyone who is planning to come to register well in advance to be sure to hold a place. There will be a waiting list this year. Registration for this summer’s LoVetri Institute for Somatic Voicework™ is now live, please click here to register!
[Read more…] about Off to Brazil, U.S. Teaching Weekend Tour & LoVetri Institute Registration is LIVE!

Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Katharine Randolph

By

Photographed Above: Somatic Voicework™ Teachers, Andrea Luyites & Katharine Randolph
Hi Katharine, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with us today. You are a very busy voice teacher in Houston; can you tell us about your studio?

My studio is predominantly made up of high school students who perform in musical theatre.  I have a handful of students who are more into pop and rock, and recently I have had an influx of young ones! (9 and 10 year olds). Most of my students dance, act, and play instruments so we have found ways to encourage and highlight all that they do.

As a seasoned performer, having trained and worked in both Musical Theatre and Classical settings, what do you think the important differences are between successes in the Operatic world vs. the Musical Theatre world, vocally speaking? [Read more…] about Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Katharine Randolph

Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Martin C. Hurt

By

Photo: Martin C. Hurt
You are a very busy voice teacher in New York City; can you tell us about your studio and your work with AMDA, Kean University, & Fairleigh Dickinson University?

Thank you for the interest in my work! Yes, I’m very busy these days teaching between 30-40 voice lesson hours per week, and enjoy every minute of my time with each client!
(Photographed below: Martin C. Hurt in Promises, Promises)
I have been a private voice instructor here in New York City and in New Jersey since 2006. My busy NYC studio consists primarily of musical theatre professionals, as well as a number of singer/songwriter and jazz artist. My New Jersey clients include adult semi-professional and avocational singers, older singers who have found me in their search for help in regaining lost or challenged vocal ability, and adolescent singers of all levels.
I teach Individual Voice at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy (NYC), a theatre arts conservatory program offering both a two year certificate degree and a BFA. My students there are enrolled in either the integrated (musical theatre), studio (acting), or dance programs.
I teach private voice for the theatre programs at Kean University (Union, NJ) and Fairleigh Dickinson University (Madison, NJ). These programs offer both BFA and BA theatre degrees and include up to two musicals and numerous plays per academic year as part of their offerings. [Read more…] about Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Martin C. Hurt

A Downward Spiral

By

I know that older people always complain about “the youth of today” and praise the good old days. Now that I am an older person, I don’t want to do that, but it is hard not to look back at what I learned and think that much of it is gone. To me, that’s a loss.

What people think of now as “good singing” is very limited. It consists of what is found on The Voice or The X Factor, particularly here in the USA. It is what is found on the top 40 stations or maybe on certain YouTube or internet sites. Much of this singing is loud, pressed and emotional only in the loudness. On the other side of the equation there are the Celtic women who sing in a light, delicate head register that is pretty and only pretty. A lot of jazz gravitates to soft breathy phonation for no particular reason and many pop singers emulate the people with two or three separate kinds of sound in their singing, even though that doesn’t add anything at all to the impetus of what they are singing. It’s more a novelty factor.

There is electronic manipulation and physical manipulation of the sound and we are inured to this as being “normal.” If you listen to singing from the 40s, 50s, 60s, or maybe early into the 70s, you will hear many individuals with “voices” that are not just like the pop/rock model we hear today. If you watch old episodes of the Johnny Carson show, you will see Broadway singers, opera singers and jazz vocalists as a normal part of his programming. If you go back to the 50s on the live TV shows you will find a good deal of excellent singing of many styles, but most particularly opera.

A freely produced, live, unprocessed voice, conveying deeply felt, honest emotion through singing is a rare commodity and young people may not ever get to experience what it is like to see and hear such singing. That, folks, is a loss. Period. If you happen to also hear a great voice — a Stradivarius throat as it were — you can be literally blown away by such an experience.

I do appreciate many of today’s young stars in various styles but I lament the dearth of singing that has to do with being a living breathing person. The point of singing at a high level is to convey deeply felt emotion without struggle in various styles while sounding personally unique. This is without auto-tune, over-dubbing, sampling, or any help from machines. It is produced by two lungs pumping air across two vocal folds and only that.

Over-darkened sound, caused by a larynx cemented to the bottom of the throat, or shouted squawked sound emitted by a larynx pulled up somewhere into the top of the throat are very typical sounds of 2018. It’s true there is some value in each but what’s lost is just as important, if not more so, than what is kept. Mostly, the sound is not expressive at all. Rap music is energized and can communicate but it isn’t a substitute for a fluid, smooth and attractive sung sound that magnifies what a human throat can do.

I know we can’t go back to the past. I know people who do not have educated musical ears don’t hear the difference or care. I know that only those who have learned to hear and to see will understand what I write here. Still, it hurts to know that music education is nearly gone, that vocal education in public schools is virtually nonexistent and that the main factor behind all commercial music is money — if you can make money the people who promote the music don’t really care if it’s good or bad. What makes money is that which is sensationalized. The weirder or the sexier the better.

What appeals to the average person is extremism. That’s because what is “out of the ordinary” is exciting. If you do not have the capacity to appreciate subtlety in an artist, if you  cannot comprehend something when it is profound and significant, explaining what you are missing is a waste of time. This kind of listening is justifiable in young children or those who have limited capacity to comprehend complex information for biological reasons, but shouldn’t be found in grown adults. For those who are sophisticated both culturally and musically the multiple colors of diversified artistic output are enthralling. That output, however, may not be commercially successful. People who like Andrew Lloyd Webber might consider him an equal of Stephen Sondheim but those who are familiar with music theater, the cognoscenti, wouldn’t ever dream of putting the composers in the same sentence. Of the two, Sir Lloyd Webber has made far more money and been more popular than Mr. Sondheim by a very long shot. They are not the least bit equal.

Things are certainly not going to reverse under the present Administration in Washington. That is sad but there are other things that are worse than the lowering of musical standards. Perhaps some day in the future when people realize how essential the arts (all of them) are to civilization, things might change. In the meantime, the continued downward spiral of more and more lousy singing continues. It’s hard to watch and to hear.

 

 

Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Brenda Earle-Stokes

By

http://brendaearle.com

(Photographed Above: Dr. Darren Wicks, Brenda Earle Stokes, Jeanie LoVetri, Dale Cox, & Dr. Melissa Forbes, all faculty at the first LoVetri Institute held in Australia, 2016)

Hi Brenda, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with us today.
In January, you’re headed back to Toowoomba, Australia to teach a CCM voice course, what can you tell us about your upcoming class?
I created a course directed at teaching singers, singing teachers and choral conductors how to sing and teach jazz, pop and rock. In my travels I noticed there were courses on the voice and acting, but no offerings on how to stylistically approach the musical elements of these genres. As a jazz pianist (both of my degrees are in jazz piano), who has played in many jazz, pop and rock rhythm sections, I want to take this area of expertise and combine it with my knowledge of the voice and singing. The result is a soup-to-nuts course, where we address groove, improvisation, rhythm, stylistic inflections, as well as vocal technique. We will be singing our way through all of these styles and there will be a jazz trio in residence for an entire day! [Read more…] about Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Brenda Earle-Stokes

Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Beth Amin

By

https://www.facebook.com/bethaminmusic/

(Photographed: Jeanie LoVetri and Beth Amin)
In January, Jeanie is headed back to Brazil to teach Levels I and II of Somatic Voicework™. What has the reception of Somatic Voicework™ in Brazil been since Jeanie was there last January?
Jeanie is very known here and year after year more people want to know about her method. Since 2005, when I met her and got my first impression of her work, we started and have been developing a community of teachers who are very interested in knowing more about Somatic Voicework™.

As someone who has served as faculty in the Somatic Voicework™ trainings and has worked with Jeanie for a long time, how has Somatic Voicework™ helped you as a singer and a teacher? [Read more…] about Spotlight On Somatic Voicework™ Teacher Beth Amin

A Year In Review & An Exciting Year Ahead

By

(Photographed Above: Jeanie LoVetri with Adele backstage at Radio City Music Hall, NYC, 2015)
This month many of our Somatic Voicework™ teachers have been performing all over the world, sharing their shining singing in all sorts of venues, including: Suzzanne Douglas, Jamie Leonhart,  Carolyn Leonhart, Theo Bleckmann, and many others.

We look forward to Jeanie’s return trip to Brazil in January where she will be teaching Level I and Level II, again at the invitation of Vocal Sao Paulo, a group of SLPs there who have done Jeanie’s work. A very large group of people have already registered for this training and Jeanie is excited to be visiting this lovely country again. Along with husband, Jerry Kaplan, Jeanie will be looking forward to spending two weeks in warm, sunny South America in the dead of the chilly NYC winter!
In February, Jeanie will be master clinician for the NATS Kansas Conference. Details will be announced in January’s newsletter.
Piotr Zielinski, our webmaster, continues to develop our Somatic Voicework™ website and we really need to hear from you in order to make sure it meets your needs and interests. Be sure to be in touch!

[Read more…] about A Year In Review & An Exciting Year Ahead

Sunday Vocal Jazz Concert & Jam Series Hosted by Jocelyn Medina

By

Every Sunday, 8-11pm
Luca’s Jazz Corner
1712 1st Ave at E. 89th St, NYC
No cover, $15 minimum
Limited seating, reservations recommended: (212) 987-9260
All shows Facebook live streamed at:
https://m.facebook.com/lucasjazzcorner/
For more info visit:
https://facebook.com/groups/353922644811239/
www.lucasjazzcorner.com
www.jocelynmedina.com

There is a weekly featured vocalist opening set from 8:00-9:00 PM, open mic & jam session for vocalists and instrumentalists to follow till 11:00 PM. House piano, amps, drums and microphones on site.