The Nature of Singing 2020 - Discovering your voice with the Feldenkrais Method®

The Nature of Singing - Finding your Voice from Within

The Feldenkrais Method® can enhance your ability to connect with your voice through exploration and awareness. These six workshops will dive into the details of our vocal anatomy and function, breathing, motor skill development and psyche, in order to clarify our impulse to sing. Experience how your whole body coordinates to inform the healthy use of your voice. Each workshop is appropriate for singers, speakers and anyone who is curious about the voice.

1. Discover and Integrate the Pelvic Floor with your Singing Self with Deborah Bowes

The pelvic floor does not work in isolation, but is integrated with breathing, full body movements, and of course, singing. In this workshop, the focus will be to develop awareness and use of the pelvic floor as a coordinated system of muscles. There will be Awareness Through Movement exercises involving the whole body in sitting, standing and lying down. You can notice immediate improvement in breathing and abdominal control, and apply that to your singing.

Deborah Bowes has been a Feldenkrais Teacher in San Francisco for more than 30 years. Her doctoral research investigated the use of the Feldenkrais Method to improve awareness and functioning of the pelvic floor. She does sing and play with her ukulele ensemble for many non-profit organizations, but is not a professional singer. She works with singers to improve the quality of movement, breathing and posture.

https://www.feldenkraissf.com/about-me-deborah

4. The Impulse to Sing with Karen Clark

Karen’s class explores how our voice grows from an impulse— an utterance — to a fully formed sustained tone. If you’ve ever been surprised by a vocal sound you’ve made unintentionally, for instance, a mouse sighting (EEEK!) or, you stub your toe (OOOUCH!) you have an idea of the range of vocal expression that is yours already. Let’s clarify what happens in these moments and see if we can turn it into conscious intention— fueled by the imagination— and learn better how you organize yourself to speak or sing.

Karen Clark, contralto holds degrees from the Indiana University School of Music where she studied opera and early music. She has taught in the music departments at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, Sonoma State, UC Berkeley, and in the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California. Karen studied the Feldenkrais Method under Russell Delman and Alan Questel (1999) and since has presented workshops across the U.S. Karen’s articles on singing, The Impulse to Sing, and, Sounds Unfamiliar are published in the Feldenkrais Journal. Considered a leading interpreter of medieval and modern music, Karen has performed and recorded worldwide with eminent ensembles, such as, Boston Camerata, Sequentia, the Joshua Rifkin Bach Ensemble. Most recent recordings— on the Music & Arts label— include 12th century music of Hildegard von Bingen with her ensemble Vajra Voices, and the song cycle, Dream Drapery— Songs on Thoreau, written for her and the Galax Quartet by Pulitzer/Grammy award winning composer, Joseph Schwantner. Karen is staying home in Petaluma, CA with her partner, Roy Whelden, and cat Molly and looks forward to blackberry pie season.

https://www.karenclark.studio/

2. The Sympathetic Skull: Improving Vocal Function by Optimizing Vocal Resonance with Robert Sussuma

What is vocal resonance? What is resonating… space or bone, or a combination? How much of our body can resonate with sound at any given moment? Is resonance passive or active? In this class, Robert will guide you through a series of sound and movement explorations that will prepare the vocal system in general - waking up our sense of the vocal tract - as well as open new ways of thinking about and working with vocal resonance.

Robert Sussuma, originally from New York City, is an explorer, a life-long learner and a connoisseur of connections: movement, speaking and singing, voice science, emotions, music, motor learning, neurology-in-action, and deep personal development. His formal education is in vocal performance (Bachelors of Music in Voice Performance and Masters of Music in Early Music Voice Performance). In addition, he is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner. Robert has taught Private Voice Lessons and Voice and Movement Classes at Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado), Haverford College (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and PACE University (New York, New York), and has maintained an active private teaching studio, for 20 years, working with with well-known and successful actors and singers in NYC, on Broadway, and abroad. Robert has also been a guest lecturer at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and Barcelona University. https://vocallearningsystems.com/about/

5. Beyond Hearing: Listening with your Whole Body with Drew Minter

In this class we will open with Taoist breathing and chakra sounding practices, followed by a Feldenkrais lesson focused on opening the body up through extending our breath awareness. We will also sing a song together and use breakout rooms to extend our hearing with Deep Listening exercises developed by Pauline Oliveros and myself.

As an internationally known countertenor for four decades, Drew Minter sang leading roles in the opera houses of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, Nice, Marseilles and others, performing with many of the world's foremost baroque orchestras, and making over 70 recordings.  Drew is Senior Music Lecturer at Vassar College, where he teaches voice, choir, opera and the Feldenkrais Method to musicians; he is an opera director and teaches frequent workshops in the singing and acting of opera, incorporating  several somatic methods:  Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, and the Viewpoints acting work.  His additional training is in Polarity, Jin shin jyutsu, Kahuna work and Body Electric.  

3. Turning Air into Sounds with Richard Corbeil

Just as we need to crawl before we walk or run, there is a chronological hierarchy of functions inherent to the use of our voice, as well as their link to speaking or singing.

In this workshop, Richard will guide you through an introductory lesson based on the developmental process of vocalization, exploring the reciprocal relationships between movement and sound prior to speaking and singing.

As a singer and a Feldenkrais Trainer, Richard Corbeil has been contributing his unique understanding of the Feldenkrais Method® to the fields of personal development, health, and the performing arts for over 30 years. Recordings of his teaching is available on https://vocalintegration.bandcamp.com.

6. Creating Engaging Rehearsals and Practice Sessions with Stephen Paparo

In this final workshop, Stephen will draw from the Feldenkrais principles and lessons presented in this series and demonstrate how to apply them in the context of choral rehearsals and individual practice sessions. We will sing together and experience how structured exploration provides opportunities for everyone to make their own technical and musical discoveries.

Dr. Stephen A. Paparo is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and conductor of the University Chorale. He holds degrees from Michigan State University (Ph.D.), Syracuse University (M.M.), and Ithaca College (B.M.). A Guild Certified Practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method® since 2006, he has taught Feldenkrais in the US and internationally. He is active as a guest conductor and regularly presents at international, national, and state conferences. He currently serves as Past-President for the Massachusetts chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. His research interests include the application of the Feldenkrais Method to singing instruction, non-traditional choral ensembles, and LGBTQ studies in music education. He is published in Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education, International Journal of Music Education, and Music Education Research, and Musicianship: Composing in Choir (GIA Publications). His compositions for beginning choirs are published by Alfred Music.