Welcome to The Liberated Voice

I am a singer, voice teacher, fitness expert, and author. This is the third incarnation of my blog.

The first launched in 2010, and my tagline was “Revolutionizing vocal technique with timeless wisdom.” The western classical music culture that surrounded my early training was (and remains) fraught with attachment to outcomes, competition, gatekeeping, and cult of personality. The idea was to offer teaching and writing informed by Buddhist concepts of mindfulness and equanimity, and to gently encourage the opera community to grow in a more humanistic direction (okay, sometimes not so gently).

I started the second in 2021, a little more than a year into the pandemic lockdown. The tagline survived, but my perspective had evolved. I was much more interested in mindfulness and equanimity as ends in themselves. I was increasingly experiencing my own singing practice as a powerful means of deepening awareness, promoting healthy self-regulation, and facilitating communication. I had also come to understand that if I wanted to help my students embrace this perspective, I needed to structure my teaching in a way that would center these singers and their experiences, as well as support their ongoing practice in between lessons.

As I launch this third iteration of The Liberated Voice, I'm contemplating the distinction between conceptual and experiential understanding, and the interesting challenge of how to use written discourse to encourage not only intellectual contemplation, but also practical engagement. In singing, for example, it's one thing to grasp the concept that less pressure and greater ease will result in a powerful, resonant sound; it's quite another to trust that less effort can yield a more satisfying result. No matter how well you understand the concept, you won't truly own it until you experience its practical manifestation for yourself. This is true for all meaningful growth and learning, not just for your singing practice. The more you embrace experiential learning in your singing practice, the more your practice will impact and deepen your learning and awareness in all areas.