peggy,
thanks for posting the interview. a lot of the things fleming and cook had to say were of interest to me. a couple of years ago, i had seen the interview with fleming that was on '60 minutes' (is that right?) and was struck when she said that singing was really just a bunch of screaming (and, i think, she may have amended that to 'glorious screaming'). in this interview, i was happy to hear her talking about what she was working on for making a jazz recording. singing jazz nearly an octave lower than what she normally sings - "it's very spoken, it's very intimate". i also like the fact that she appears to think it needs to be sung in a different voice from her opera voice (what a relief!). if we look at how ella fitzgerald sang, we see what fleming is talking about. it is always surprising to me to realize how low fitzgerald sang most of her stuff.
cook is absolutely right in saying that there is soft singing that can only be done with amplification (and be heard). i understand that a lot of people are bothered by amplification (i know you are one of them) but, it does open up other possibilities that were impossible before. perhaps the objections should be to how it is done rather than to it being done at all.
lastly, they both seem to have had a 'fake it till you make it' approach to learning how to sing. there seems little point in learning from scratch, that which one can already do (even dr. frankenstein had to get the spark of life for his monster, from nature).
mike
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