Holistic Musicianship

Voice Coaching and Ensemble Direction

Technical flexibility is also an imperative for any singer working in today’s market. The ability to fill a variety of roles gives a student a better chance of success and I can help build that marketability. Beyond Western, elite training I have experience working with singers in multiple popular genres, musicals, a cappella ensembles, gospel, non-Western traditions, and early Western music. Each requires a unique technical approach but, fundamentally, a solid foundation in breath support and an understanding of one’s own physical reactions and habits regarding music making offer a platform to perform in any and all of these musical styles. This is rather important as, often, students are unsure or unaware of how to best market themselves or even what style is most agreeable to their timbre or skillset. By equipping students with the tools needed to find answers to those questions, I try to give individuals the best chance at finding meaning and a profitable career.

I have been trained as a choral music director, a voice coach, and have conducted ensembles in the United States and Austria. I specialize in promoting a flexibility in technique, seeking first to establish healthy, consistent physical habits before strengthening respiratory muscles and building breath and eventually sub- and supraglottal control. I embrace the appoggio insofar as it helps a singer maintain consistent body position and create good habits but, when approaching music outside of the common-practice period, Alexander or Feldenkrais methods can also be successful in preparing a singer for perhaps more moderate subglottal pressures.

Arranging and Translation

In translation I use a similar approach to arranging. Beginning with both literal and interpretive translations, I work to combine a fidelity to the original meanings of words and phrases and marry it to the needs of the poem or music. Often I come across translations in score study that are purely interpretive and lack the underlying subtlety or poetic nuance of the original. For example, Harold Heiberg’s ‘English version’ of Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore, seen to the right, includes some fundamental flaws.

I have bolded the font in the location where Respighi leads the ear musically in each of the two large sections of this text. Notice in the original there is no indication of dirtiness, Poco affare does not imply being ‘low’ or ‘unclean,’ but ‘humble.’ These are men of little means and great humility, to insinuate that they do not wish to touch Him for worry of staining or dirtying belies the true meaning of the encounter— that these men wished to touch the holy child but, as humble men, felt unworthy of such an honor. I included a reference to Mary as, in the context of the piece, it is unclear whether this is or is not a soliloquy.

Providing translations is a key component to not only scholarship, but also to student solo and ensemble performance. Having a faithful English version from which a student or audience member can draw meaning is helpful to program development.

An area in which I have flourished as an individual performer and ensemble leader is in arranging and translation. Unsurprising given my training in paleography and linguistics, this skill is a priceless tool in providing choirs meaningful and musically expressive repertories from as old as the thirteenth century in Italy to a cappella renditions of twenty-first-century popular music.

The example to the left is an arrangement of the second movement from Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite [1889] for string quintet. This piece was originally written for four hands at the piano, but a quintet was needed for an event in 2015. This arrangement includes considerations for the limits of the ensemble and uses carefully placed doubling for the greater volume needed in the event space while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original composition.

Original: “Contenti n’andremo se’un poco noie lo podessemo toccare, lo podessemo toccare; e però te ne pregamo quanto noie, quanto noie siam pastori de poco affare.”

Heiberg version: “Happy would we hasten back to our hillsides and our flocks, could we but touch Him, to our flocks, could we touch Him; yet dare not ask this favor. Unclean shepherds, unclean shepherds we are fearful that we might smutch Him.”

Carlson revision: “Gladly would we leave this holy child, leave this holy child if we could but touch Him, if we could but touch Him; yet holy, holy Mary we are but humble shepherds.”