I loved my early voice study with Richard Armstrong, loved the permission he gave me to let loose big, rage-filled sound. Thick multiphonics rumbled around within my chest and splayed their way up through my sinuses, many pitches all at once in areas used to being much tidier. I reveled in the tussle of aggressive, […]
Reclaiming Calliope Missive 5: The Full-Blown Beauty of Anger Read More »
Early this morning I listened to Chapter One of Breath while walking through downtown Toronto. As the heat tumbled in around me author James Nestor explained that aeons ago human mouths, throats and noses became less robust through the eating of softer, cooked foods and although this proved to be a better adaptation for speech
Reclaiming Calliope Missive Four: Yawning Read More »
IF YOU WANTED to join my vocal studio, I would ask you to take an introductory private lesson. In that first session you would learn that air wants you to thrive, that it does not discriminate between individuals, that it is not out of reach. As our first hour progressed I would focus on your
Reclaiming Calliope Missive Three: Room to Breathe Read More »
Lake Nipissing’s churned up water crashes wave after wave onto a beach only meters from the rustic cabin within which I am prepping my teacher’s training summer module. Books by Betty Martin and David George Haskell bring to the surface what is shared between the acts of giving and receiving and the acoustic history of
Reclaiming Calliope Missive Two: Hope is the Thing with Feathers Read More »
Our means of vocal censorship and our systems of survival are one and the same. Trying to be polite, intelligent, under control or dominant becomes etched into our breath and voice bodies.
To free my students from this tyranny I teach them to trust the relief of a sigh.
I also explain that the efficacy of a moan – whether as a result of pleasure or pain – soothes the moaner while conveying pertinent information.
Sighs, moans, grunts and sobs are part of our innate empathy processes – how we attune to one another.
The Mystery of the Pharynx Read More »
Photo by Makoto Hirata —– I live by the salt water, and look out every day on a rock where seals sunbathe; my distance vision is impressionistic, the bodies lounging where rock meets wave might as well be mermaids….
The Mermaid: A Conversation with Fides Krucker – Julie Trimingham Read More »
Martha fell off her perch in the Cincinatti Zoo one hundred years ago. I wish I’d known her, known the darkening skies when 2.5 billion of her species, the passenger pigeon, flew in one large airborne colony, their beating wings deafening human ears below. Drawings by Audubon show a pretty bird, refined lines, the female
Permission to Scream Read More »
Today I noticed something fresh; the sound of the human voice floating freely in the air. There is little traffic, no hum of tall buildings. I hear children’s voices and women’s voices and the men, too. Calling out to each other, singing fragments of song. Not competing with anything but the birds and the wind and the occasional
Hummingbird at dawn Read More »
January 2013 Steven Tyler is my boyfriend. Every time I listen to him on youtube I fall in love. There is something in the undisguised pain his voice lays bare that pulls me in – heart, head and pussy. I understand perfectly that I am needed when I hear that much pain. I know how
…A young girl…really, a toddler…is singing along with Adele in the back of the family van. She follows each curve of the melody and each curve of Adele’s emotional life within the song. Her ‘two-something’ ability to identify with thoroughly engaged temper tantrum holds her in good stead and she is really expressive within the container of this breakup song.
Documentary Singing Read More »