Don't aim to have a career, rather have a life and sing about it!
I have recently been appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor at Leeds College of Music and will give regular classes there in baroque singing. I have also given masterclasses at the Moscow Conservatoire, Stanislawsky Theatre and Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as well as Geidai University for the Fine Arts in Tokyo, Senzoku Gakuen University in Kawasaki, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and Royal College of Music in London.
I will have a baroque singing class at the summer school Austria Barock Akademie in Schloss Orth, Gmunden from 8th and 15th August. The places for this course are severely limited so please send me an email with your biography and a sound file as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.
I also teach privately from my studio in Berlin. If you are interested in having a consultation lesson, please do not hesitate to send me an email.
lessons in style: The famous Handelian soprano Cuzzoni was admired for her agreeable, clear, pure intonation and beautiful trill. She was said to have had a nice, pleasant, light style of delivery and a tenderness which won the hearts of listeners. Similarly Mozart admired the singer Aloysia Weber for her purity of tone, her cantabile, range, virtuosity and control. He praised his sister Nannerl for her quiet, even touch on the keyboard, her natural lightness, flexibility and smooth rapidity of hand.
But a 'natural' vocal production rarely comes naturally! Ease of delivery is only truly mastered by understanding the science of a healthy physiological vocal function. The art of singing is putting this physiological knowledge at the service of a musical idea. The voice informs the music and the music the voice. Music and vocal technique are inextricably linked in mutual voyage of discovery. It is a deeply revalatory and creative process.
"Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe itself. Like all great beauty, his music is pure simplicity"
- Albert Einstein
I combined singing with teaching and conducting in the early stages of my career, conducting the Chamber Choir at Manchester University and later Hillingdon Music Centre. I was head of singing at Marlborough College in Wiltshire from 1989-1992. After a hectic couple of decades traveling all over the world as a singer, I am glad to be coming full circle and integrating teaching once more into my routine. As well as my own formal singing training, I also draw on many years of experience practising yoga and the use of sound-massage therapy (Klang-massage nach Peter Hess).
"And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the strings" -Plato The Republic of Plato, trans. B. Jowett
