Reclaiming Calliope: In-Person Book Launch
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Pedagogy
Reclaiming Calliope Missive 5: The Full-Blown Beauty of Anger
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,
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Reclaiming Calliope Missive Four: Yawning
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
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Reclaiming Calliope Missive Three: Room to Breathe
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
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The Mystery of the Pharynx
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.
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Permission to Scream
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
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Hummingbird at dawn
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
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Naked Men Crying
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
Documentary Singing
…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.
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Slipper Camp
Slipper camp is my version of a boot camp for the voice. Over one hour, in a group setting, I lead a class through my approach to vocal exercises. We begin by working on breath release, delving deeply into the parasympathetic functioning of the Autonomic Nervous System. We approach pitch as an extension of the