Molly McLinden wrote:
> I had planned to go on my school's Italy
> program for the second time this year, but it fell through due to the fact
> that it's a heckuva lot of $.
>
> I also want to know what I can do on my own to give me an edge and feel that
> my summer was entirely non-musical. I am going to try my darndest not to be
> jealous when people come back from their trip this summer......
>
Hi Molly,
You are wise not to accumulate a huge debt load at this time in your career.
Listening to recordings is always worthwhile IMHO. You can hear all kinds of
performers in a huge variety of repertoire, compare interpretations and make new
discoveries.
My summer self-help program usually includes attending some kind of voice or
performance workshop locally (if I'm not on tour), lots of listening and lots of
reading. I like listening to language tapes to help me pick up proper accents
and cadences. There are also the standard singers diction books that I often
review in the summer (Bernac; Castel, Lyric Spanish Diction; Wall, Diction for
Singers; Piatak, Russian Songs and Arias; Skinner, Speak with Distinction;
etc.). Next are the recent pedagogy books and tapes (anything by Richard
Miller; McKinney, Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults; Baxter, The Rock and
Roll Singer's Survival Manual; Sataloff, Vocal Health and Pedagogy; Tate,
Functional Voice; Sundberg, The Science of the Singing Voice; Stark, Bel Canto;
Nair, Voice -- Tradition and Technology; Vennard, Singing -- the Mechanism and
the Technique; Riggs, Singing for the Stars; etc.), followed by the historic
pedagogy books (Marchesi, Bel Canto a Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method;
Nordica, Hints to Singers; Lamperti, Vocal Wisdom; Marafioti, Caruso's Method of
Voice Production; Brower & Cooke, Great Singers on the Art of Singing; Kagen, on
Studying Singing; Garcia, Hints on Singing; etc.). Then there are the
performance books (anything by Wesley Balk; Ristad, A Soprano on her Head;
Emmons & Thomas, Power Performance for Singers; Gartside, Interpreting the songs
of Fauré and Interpreting the songs of Ravel; Ardoin, Callas at Juilliard;
Emmons & Sonntag, the Art of the Song Recital; Green, The Inner Game of Music;
Schneider, Concert Song as Seen; Helmsley, Singing and Imagination; etc.). Now
there remains a diverse and peculiar collection of books (Ingram, Talk, Talk,
Talk; Swain, Musical Languages; Madaule, When Listening Comes Alive; Campbell,
Music and Miracles; Schafer, The Soundscape; Newham, The Healing Voice; Newman,
Mouthsounds; anything by David Barber; Jourdain, Music the Brain and Ecstasy;
Conable, How to learn the Alexander Technique; Cameron, The Artist's Way;
Reaney, Performance Poems; McCallion, The Voice Book etc.).
Wow! Those are only some of the books on my shelves. I'm definitely NOT
reading/reviewing them all this summer! I still have to play in the garden,
figure out more of this *#@&\\ computer and go camping on Vancouver Island after
I get back from Stratford.
If you believe that sight reading and sight singing are important skills, then
work at improving them. Could you improve your keyboard skills or your skills
on another instrument? Most singers should be able to play piano better than
they do IMHO. I'm sure that you'll get lots of suggestions for keeping busy
this summer and I'm looking forward to seeing the responses.
Cheers
Craig, Burnaby BC
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