Voice
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Lorree Slye, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I tell my students, 'I'm here to blow a hole in the myth that singing is easy.' But if we're well trained, we can make it look effortless. Singers are multitaskers; we have to do so many things simultaneously. We've got to breathe, we've got to read, we've got to count, we've got to interpret. And because we're interpreting, we have to use every emotion—we have to be actors. If students are going to study with me, I want them to understand that we're going to deal with the whole spectrum of their emotions. We are the voice of the composer when we sing."
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Diane Richardson, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I think one of the most beautiful instruments is the voice. I love exploring its different textures and tone colors. I try to motivate my students to develop a solid technical foundation, find an emotional connection to the music, and fuse their interpretations with honesty and integrity."
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Kudisan Kai, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Vocal technique is my specialty, not only because of my classical training, but because of my experience in performing other styles of music. I know how to utilize standard classical technique in these styles and still maintain integrity. I tell my students, 'I want you to marry yourself to your technique, and know it so well that, like breathing, you don't have to think about it; you just do it. Which requires you to be disciplined and to commit to practicing it until it becomes muscle memory.'"
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Janice Pendarvis, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"My professional experience has been very eclectic. I've worked as a soloist, a background vocalist, and a voice announcer. When it comes to genre, I've done everything from the avant garde classical with Philip Glass to rock with Sting to singing duets with the reggae great Peter Tosh. I've sung in different languages, from the South African click language Xhosa to Japanese. And I think having an eclectic background allows me to easily relate to a range of students who have different interests. There really isn't any type of music I don't like; I find something to like in just about every genre. So I'm interested in seeing where everybody's at and where we can go within the confines of the subject I have to teach."
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Andrea Capozzoli, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"When I'm trying to get something across to a student, I try to put myself in their place. I might even make myself do what they're doing wrong. But I won't move on until the student gets it; I'll keep trying different approaches until they feel what I'm trying to explain. It's really hard to incorporate all the technique in a song. A student might get it in the warm-ups, but then when they start to sing the song, it's not there. It takes time."
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Gabrielle Goodman, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"A good singer has beautiful tone quality, a good sense of pitch, rhythm, phrasing, and stylistic interpretation. A good singer also has a clear understanding of how to deliver the meaning of the song and an emotional connection to the music. Singers must be sensitive to what is going on around them harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically. Things aren't just going to happen by osmosis. And of course, they must have tenacity, the willingness to work to become better."
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Kathryn Wright, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Unlike instrumentalists, singers must communicate not only through music, but additionally, through words. Singers are actors as well as musicians and must reveal the emotions behind the lyrics as well as the passion of the musical phrase. Good technical development is not an end unto itself. It is a means for empowering the singer to express those emotions freely and poignantly."
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Joyce Lucia, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"Charlie Parker said, 'If you don't live it, it won't come out of the horn.' A musician should be engaged in activities other than music. So I give multifaceted assignments. I ask instrumentalists to listen to singers, and I ask singers to listen to instruments. And I always give my students something to read. No teacher ever did this with me, but it makes so much sense. And the students who get it really grow."
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David Thorne Scott, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I try to remind students why we're doing music. It's about creating beauty and it's something you enjoy, something your audience will enjoy. Musicians can get really competitive. If you're just trying to do better than the other guy, or if you're trying to get better out of fear of being exposed as a fraud, you're not really in the right space. If you're singing out of fear, you have a 100 percent chance that it's not going to be right. Even if the notes are right, even if you're doing everything correctly, your listeners are going to be able to tell, and it's just going to ring false somehow. Now if you have a spirit of joy in creating music, you still might mess it up. Maybe then you have a 50 percent chance of getting it right. But at least you give yourself a chance. Yes, everybody should learn to play the piano and should learn their 251s and should learn music theory and sight reading—I'm all about competence. But I never want my students to forget that this is all in service of something that's supposed to be beautiful and supposed to be a pleasure."
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Jeannie Gagné, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"The voice comprises the most complicated muscle group in the entire body, using more of the cerebral cortex than any other part of the body. Because it's so complex, in a lesson you can't just say, 'change this, change that.' What I do suggest is that in order to get the result you want—and we talk about what that might be—students should try different approaches with my guidance. I'll say, 'This way might be more effective,' rather than, 'What you're doing is wrong.' I believe that if you simply tell someone that what they're doing is wrong, it makes the body tense. A tense body has a harder time singing, and that's counterproductive.
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