Meet & Greet

I’m from Melbourne, Australia. I have a few favourite foods because we are spoilt with choice here - Kebab, pizza, burgers, parmigiana, pasta, hotpot, Korean bbq, Korean fried chicken, bibimbap, ramen. 
 

I just gave birth a month ago so I’ve been singing a lot of nursery rhymes everyday and looking to upskill while I’m on maternity leave. I’m a full time piano and singing teacher and own the music school, Lina’s Music House. 
 

I’ve been trained in popular music performance and would like to learn more about classical singing and technique - back to basics 

I live in Vermont, down the road from Middlebury College. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, raised in Bloomington, Minnesota, I have an Art History degree from Stanford and a Master of Divinity degree from Boston University.

As I was a year exchange student in Venezuela, studied at the Goethe Institute while living in Berlin for a year, studied abroad in France and Southern Switzerland, and kept up my languages, I am conversationally fluent in Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

I studied voice for a couple years in high school, and again for a year in my 20's. I started back up a year and a half ago, along with piano, organ, and ear training lessons.

I've been working towards a recital showcasing my languages. Here is the proposed program:

Malinconia, Ninfa Gentile —Vincenzo Bellini

Sebben, crudele  — Antonio Caldera

O del mio amato ben —Alberto and Stefano Donaudy

Widmung —Robert Schumann

Wie Melodien —Johannes Brahms

Wohin —Franz Schubert

There’s nae lark —Samuel Barber

Let Beauty Awake —Ralph Vaughan Williams

Sure on this Shining Night —Samuel Barber

Villanelle —Hector Berlioz

Beau soir —Claude Debussy

Nell —Gabriel Fauré

La Siesta —Charles Gounod (duet)

De ronda — Joaquin Rodrigo

Nana —Manuel De Falla

Che gelida manina —Giacomo Puccini

Encore: The Monk and His Cat —Samuel Barber

I used to enjoy maple syrup, but am now sugar free (and 80 pounds lighter).

As I've had trouble securing a consistent voice teacher, I am deeply appreciating all I'm learning from the Bel Canto series, Andrew Garland on the Baritone voice, Dr. Jenevora Williams on vocal health, Derick Goff on the International Phonetic Alphabet, and the 2-week diction intensive with Heidi. 

I've studied ear training in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger for a year now and enjoy it immensely. Though I have sung in choirs for as long as I can remember and listened to my mother play classical piano repertoire growing up, it is only in the past year that I feel I have begun to understand music. Last month I sang in the men's chorus of "La Fille du Régiment," my first time in an opera, and enjoyed it immensely.

Hi there everybody. My name is Duncan Bouwer. I am a South African Kiwi living in Hamilton New Zealand. My favorite food is that which I do not have to cook myself.
I am an itinerant vocals teacher with a Waikato itinerant team. We serve schools in abroad area, (I teach at 5) preparing them for NCEA exams. I also have a private studio called DB Voice which I run from my home. I have 24 students at present and I’m just about full, I’m happy to say. Most of my students are contemporary singers of some description, with one or two that crossover to the classical repertoire.
When I was in my 20s, (64 last Sunday) I was a member of an opera company in Cape Town South Africa, where I sang first tenor in the opera chorus. Sadly, I got sidetracked into musical Theatre and performed male leads in musicals all over South Africa. I started teaching in 1991 and neglected my own singing for a long time not venturing into opera again for ages. About five years ago, I decided that I would like to work towards a classical concert of some description, and I thought Die Schöne Müllerin (Schubert) would be a worthy contender. I started working on my own, but realized that my performance hangups regarding opera were not helping. Bad technique, years and years since last singing, opera , and age came in to play. So I found myself a local teacher, and since about three years ago, I’ve been making good progress, but all the factors above are an ongoing impediment. However, slowly, but surely I have regained most of my upper register, and I can now again sing a relatively reliable Bb with the occasional B and even C in exercises. My full schedule makes it hard for me to find time to find time for practice but I sing as often as I can.

I have mostly been working on the above song cycle, Tosti and Arie Antiche wbith the occasional venture into arias. It has been gratifying in the last while to begin to be able to sing some of those which caused me great grief in my 20s.

Because I’m starting out as it were at such an advanced age, I don’t have much hope that I will perform as an opera singer, but I will most definitely be giving it a try. Fortunately, I have the right connections, due to my work, so if I can get myself to the place where I can consistently produce the goods, I probably still have a shot at singing oratorio and song cycles. 
I am hoping that this platform will help me to achieve my goals, and at first glance (I am still in the free trial period, having joined last night) it would appear that there certainly is enough material here to give me a good shot. I am fortunate to have a good opera friend in Canada, who was a friend in South Africa when we were at the opera Company together, who is on a virtually identical journey to mine, so we mutually encourage each other daily. 

Thanks for the warm welcome. I am really looking forward to this journey.

Dear everyone, 

I am glad to be here. My name is Stephan, I am from Germany. I am a father to two wonderful young boys and my family and I just moved to a remote island in the Northern Sea (Spiekeroog, formerly 780 inhabitants, now 784, no cars). I love Italian and Vietnamese food and everything I can cook using the things that grow in our garden. 

I have sung as a choir tenor for many years, as well as a Countertenor/Alto Soloist for  I always had a pretty good developed falsetto. Although both went nice and well in terms of a "career", it never really felt completely "me" and so I was happy to discover during my conservatory time that I am actually headed towards being a dramatic tenor. This is where I am right now, trying to get rid of old habits and relating completely to a dramatic voice, without holding back but also without forcing or pushing. The difference is sometimes very small - quite a job at hand here :) 

Besides my own singing I give voice lessons and work as a choir conductor as well as giving workshops for (choir) singers on how to sing healthy and body-connected in a choir. Also, I give workshops for conductors on how their gestures might influence the sound the choir is producing and what might help to get a free, connected sound from the viewpoint of the gestures the choir master is offering. This meditating between the singers and the choir masters is most interesting :) 

Here on tonebase I am looking forward to getting new and valuable input (I already do, thank you very much for your content here!) and meeting fellow "voice nerds" who love singing just as much as I do. I believe that a positive community can help everybody so much in achieving goals - Walls we already do have enough everywhere.

If you do have any questions regarding the German language in music, feel free to contact me. I am happy to help - if I can :) 

Looking forward to getting to know more of you, maybe seeing you in classes. 

Best regards from the Northern Sea

Stephan 

Hi Everyone,

I just subscribed to the Voice section, having been part of  Tonebase Guitar for several years now. I grew up in Germany and moved to the States in 1979, having lived in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and, for the past 25 years, in Illinois, Champaign/Urbana area. I am retired from university teaching and got interested in Voice training a while back as a way to improve my public speaking. These days, I enjoy German folksongs and also Irish folk. Guitarist Laura Snowden has a nice set of lessons on arranging traditional folks songs for guitar, and my goal is to sing and accompany myself on the guitar. I am a complete beginner when it comes to more disciplined singing and voice development, but, then, what is retirement for if you cannot start something new...Smile

Peter

Hello Heidi it is a pleassure to meet  You I am from Colombia South America there are many dishes that I love the most for example "mute Santandereano" "ajiaco santafereño" "bandeja paisa" "el mote blanco costeño, or el mote, that is made with guandú, grilled fish and the fruit  and vegetable salads.

at this point of my life, I dedicate my time to take care of my 2 in a special condition  sisters, and right now I am resuming my passion for singing, actually I am a Soprano, but the reason that I am here at tonebase is because I am looking forward to grow and fulfill myself as a professional classical and sacred areas, music singer, but I know that I have to study very hard and it will be an awesome, incredible, an amazing and beautiful experience shared with Tonebase    

There´s another challenge for me: the lenguague I would ask for Your forgiveness becuase of my English is not that perfect but I need to improve it soon. Thank You very much Heidi 😊

Hello-I am Mike and I sing baritone/bass.  I started in choruses back in grade school. I am  back into singing after a few decades away. Do not have a music degree. Went to a federal service academy, then 6 years active duty (infantry) then law school.  I am

president of our local choral

society and I focus on classical/opera.  I here to really hone my musical

skills, specially tuning up my head voice .

Plus, my wife is from Wales and I am

trying to sing Welsh folk songs.

Thanks.

Kia ora koutou,

My name is Rebecca and I'm a twice-transplanted Kiwi/New Yorker, now living in my native Aotearoa New Zealand, but still missing my adopted hometown of New York! I've been singing (high soprano) in choirs since I was 12 and taking on solo work (firmly classical -- though I did just sing a wedding which required me to do a bit of belting below the stave in faux-rocker mode) here and there since my mid-20s. I have very little formal singing training (maybe a year's-worth of lessons, some time ago now) but a lot of on-the-ground training in singing and musicianship.At the moment I sing in a church choir (1-2 rehearsals and 2 services a week) and in a high-level choir specialising in early and contemporary music.

I tend to alternate between periods where I feel confident in my voice and vocal technique, and periods of mild despair where I feel like I'll never really know how to sing.  I subscribed today because I'm in one of the latter phases! I'm struggling to balance my sound between registers, struggling to breathe consistently, and struggling a bit with the "low high notes" -- E, F, G -- which are feeling a bit pinched and thin. :-/  (Part of this I think is because of the tension I experience singing in the high-level early music group.)  I don't have a teacher locally, and I have virtually no spare time, so I figured tonebase was a good place to start!