Barbara Massury, an executive coach and consultant, and internationally acclaimed soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams team up to tackle your questions about career development, stress management, and work/life balance.
When you are a pianist playing auditions, it's a day of sight-reading. Singers with high hopes and jangling nerves parade through the door, put a well-thumbed binder in front of you, point to a (hopefully) well-marked spot on the page, give you an approximate tempo, and then step to the front of the room to be judged.
With limited time to grab and hold the attention of a Young Artist Program screening panel, you cannot spend too much time adjusting and tailoring your résumé. It’s just a sheet of paper, yet there are so many pertinent details that it can be overwhelming to sort through them all. Kathleen Farrar Buccleugh shares feedback and advice from actual Young Artist Program administrators.
If you’ve ever listened to an original Broadway cast recording while following along with the printed music, you may have noticed some differences between what you hear and what you see. For those of us coming from the world of classical singing, where honoring each composer’s intent is paramount, these changes can feel like cardinal sins.
Singing and Teaching Singing: A Holistic Approach to Classical Voice by Janice L. Chapman and Ron Morris has had an impressive evolution over the last two decades. The first edition was released by Plural Publishing in 2005, followed by a second edition in 2011 and a third in 2016, each of which featured significant additions and updates.
The difference between a singer and a performer is… a career. With all the lessons a singer must go through to prepare and perfect the voice it is little wonder that when a singer gets on a stage the voice is where concentration is directed.
Every artist is constantly looking to stand out amongst the thousands of singers who audition every year. We all know arias like “Ah! Mes Amis!” and “Der Hölle Rache,” when well-sung, often make an audition panel sit up and take note. But what if you want to add something new and unusual to your audition package?
A new book explores sound perception as it applies to singing.
Why are negative reviews sometimes so hurtful? Singing can be a deeply vulnerable act, and an attack on one’s voice can easily be understood as a personal insult. We pour countless hours of training, study, rehearsal into a performance, and suddenly it’s out of our control. One person’s opinion about the event is all that some people will read, and it feels deeply unfair. How can we best handle the apparent setback of a disapproving critic?
Fear of being misunderstood hijacked most of my life. I yearned to be a digestible bite, easily served up to impress a stranger at a dinner party. But, no matter how hard I tried, I’m just not someone that can fit into a box.
In this column, we explore singers to watch, celebrate new albums, note new resources for singers, and other industry changes.
Soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams and executive advisor Barbara Massury begin a series of conversations on resilience, agency, and fulfillment. Follow along as this series unfolds.
