Where We Were Then and Where We Are Now: A Singing Teacher's Perspective
2015; Routledge; Volume: 71; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Music Education Insights
ResumoI WAS ONCE A YOUNG SINGING STUDENT with dedicated voice teachers. Because of these teachers, I gained a solid foundation in classical technique as well as teaching technique. When I was sixteen years old, I studied voice at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. At eighteen, I was at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. And at twenty-four, I took voice lessons at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology during my brief flirt with a science career. The teachers I had made a commitment to me. I know now as a teacher myself that their dedication went beyond the thirty minutes when I was standing in front of them at lessons. I am grateful for that dedication and commitment, and have fond feelings for all of them.However, I also have regrets, not about them but about the era and the expectations for voice studies when I grew up. In those times, the 1980s, taking voice lessons in the midwest usually meant only one thing: becoming a classical singer. I didn't know any better, and my teachers' musical worlds were no bigger than that. Had I known differently, I would not have committed my educational time and student debt to prepare me for a genre I felt little passion for and would not have had to spend the following ten years searching for ways to find joy and confidence in my singing again. I've talked to many singers and teachers, both younger and older than I, who experienced a similar steering of their careers and a subsequent disappointment in the results.Fortunately, our field has changed as our world of music education has expanded its horizon. The myriad genres people are singing in choirs are practically endless. The rock, jazz, and music theater programs that are now available are restricted only by location and distance. Students and families can express their faith in a wide variety of music genres in an equally wide variety of churches, synagogues, and mosques. And, the choices of music available via the Internet is something like a dream and far different from my limited childhood resources consisting of my parent's records and a few local radio stations.Instead of the genre gaps of previous generations, we now have genre bridges where artists work together to make new and hybrid music. Rock and jazz singers create music with classical symphony orchestras, while opera singers join with pop music singers to create popera. Today's singers are so much more aware of the directions they can go with their music. In most metropolitan areas, singers can find a teacher in any genre; and if they can't find one close to home, they can find one who teaches lessons online. Kids and parents today know much more about these options than I and my parents did. As a result, a singing teacher today might find his or her studio dwindling away if focused solely on classical voice technique and repertoire.Besides student demand, also driving this training of multiple genres is voice science. Just as physiologists now encourage athletes to cross-train, voice scientists are suggesting that for optimum vocal health, coordination, flexibility, range, and endurance, we need to exercise and train the entire breadth of the voice, not just one section of it.Also inspiring genre bridges are singers with a lifetime of successful professional singing in multiple styles. Music theater is perhaps the easiest place to find cross-trained singers like Norbert Leo Butz, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sara Ramirez, but one can also find in opera the likes of Thomas Quasthoff and Eileen Farrell, and in pop and rock, performers such as Freddy Mercury of Queen fame and Linda Ronstadt who sang with everyone from Frank Zappa to The Chieftains. We can also look to our own NATS ranks to find singer/ teachers such as David Sabella Mills and Edrie Means Weekly who perform professionally in multiple genres. …
Referência(s)