Tougas- Voice Overview- 11/2

 This week in VRH I was really impressed by Emma Dombroski’s performance! She sang an aria and what really stunned me (in the very best way), is how she had huge registral shifts and yet found the perfect ring still. You could really see the expansion of the rib cage and her diaphragm, yet her head remained perfectly aligned. Almost as though if you only could see the performance from the top half up, it was seemingly effortless. The resonance achieved was especially evident due to the space in the back of the soft palate that was kept open so that the sound traveled up and out into the mask rather than straight/flat out of the mouth off the hard palate. What was really impeccable was how it didn’t matter what the vowel was, the lips shaped the sound while the inside space was in-tact. It seems like something we all know, but to actually execute it so flawlessly is really the feat! Great great job Emma, it was stunning!


In my voice lesson we worked a lot through my German piece, “Standchen” by Brahms. As we sang, we used the analogy of a basketball player preparing to shoot a basketball. I tend to lock my knees so this helped me feel as though I was prepping for each note with a little bounce to align the breath and inversely get on top of the note for a nice ping. Also, as I ascended through a few runs, we did an exercise where Dr. Hart had me have my hands travel in a horizontal motion, as though I was flattening the sheets of a bed or running my hands along a string. Fairly quickly into this exercise, I forgot all about the high note that was approaching, having been too focused on the motion of my hands. However, it actually helped my high note shimmer because I wasn’t allowing my intercostals to seize as I got nervous. I think this year it has really hit me how much singing is a mental game and how we should be willing to try different things. No practice should ever be exactly the same! Take chances and get messy. 

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