MY OWN STORY

Before my own voice began to collapse at the age of thirty, I had been assessed by world-renown singers and teachers to possess the talent for a brilliant international operatic career. My early vocal decline brought me to question whether I had been talented after all! An array of well-known vocal teachers could not help me and insisted there must be something wrong with me - of course there was something wrong! - My personal instrument of musical expression was no longer functioning and I was desperate to learn why and fix it as quickly as possible.

Luckily in the search to rediscover and retrain my voice, fate intervened. In 1976 I became acquainted with the pedagogical writings of the famous and controversial teacher/author Cornelius Reid in New York City - 'Controversial' because he did not teach the conventional methods of breathing and support or placement of the voice. His pedagogical emphasis was on healthful use of the larynx, its associated muscle systems and the tonal qualities produced by the vocal registers.

I began learning first hand about his methods through Kenneth Nielsen in Calgary, Alberta, who at that time had done research for Mr Reid at the Gainsville Institute for Vocal Research. My first few singing lessons with Ken were humiliating as my voice was so out of balance that I could not sing more than 10 minutes at a time. It was as if I had never taken a singing lesson in my life when I had studied since the age of fourteen and performed leading operatic roles!

In 1977 I began working with Cornelius Reid himself. I made extended trips to Manhattan for lessons and used the opportunity to observe him teaching singers like Ellen Shade, Ariel Bybee, Wendy White, and others - enormous talents who had major international operatic careers. For more than 30 years until shortly before his death in the winter of 2008 at the age of 97, Cornelius Reid persisted to take my voice apart, work the registers, and put them back together in a state of balanced tension. He initiated me to the concept of 'process' and yielding to nature’s laws without placing false demands on my voice or my psyche. Those years were indeed the most extraordinary and rewarding journey of my professional life.

The undertaking of functional voice training with Cornelius Reid and his courageous followers led me not only to vocal freedom, but allowed me to reclaim my youthful pursuit as a teacher, a career choice that has brought me immeasurable fulfillment. Thanks also to Cornelius Reid’s knowledge and generosity, I learned so that the benefits of functional voice training may be passed from voice to voice and ear to ear into the future.

During these thirty plus years, the majority of my teaching has focused on rescuing, and rebuilding the voices of singers damaged in career pursuit or who had given up singing because they could find no one to help them address their vocal problems.

What concerns me the most is the question: Why did these voices, including my own, require "fixing" in the first place?