Master Classes
My Vocal Master Classes have been very interesting. I’ve held them in many Colleges and Universities in the United States, and several in Europe, including Hungary, Finland, Romania, Italy and Ireland.
The Master Class teacher is somebody who knows more about singing than the students. He/she has also had a lot of experience, and learned many things about the Art of singing.
My first MC experience was at Duke University. I held 2 separate classes on stage, and spent a couple of hours hearing and advising students. I remember being very anxious about what would happen. I wondered whether I would be able to listen to 1 or 2 pieces by each college student, for about 5 minutes for each song, and come up with helpful suggestions after that brief audition. I had to hear, think, and decide immediately what each singer needed.
I did my best as always, but I knew I had to do more of this “listening”.
Soon after this experience, I had the opportunity to be present at a New York Master Class given by the famous opera singer, Shirley Verrett. Miss Verrett entered the stage in a form-fitting bright red suit, lots of gold jewelry and black sling-back pumps. It was at that moment that I had a catharsis. I decided I had to make an impression similar to Ms. Verrett’s.
I immediately bought a silk black pants suit, co-ordinated jewelry and make-up, and the proper elegant shoes. At my next MC, you wouldn’t have recognized me. I had a different Air, I looked much more professional, and I was much more relaxed. Naturally, I took lots of notes at Ms. Verrett’s class, including her reactions to the students’ singing and all the qualities that went with it.
My Master Classes improved greatly. I learned to listen and make judgments quickly, to help the students relax, and share with them what they needed to do to improve.
Over the many years during which I have had the great pleasure of encouraging young singers—-male and female—there has been one factor which, in every single case, has needed improvement. That is BREATHING.
A singer’s breathing is unlike the breathing we do throughout our lives and which we don’t even think about.
The great Italian tenor, Luciano Pavoratti has said that in breathing, “you just move the diaphragm up and down”, and what a diaphragm he had!
This movement is absolutely essential. What I like to have the students discover, is that they need to expand the whole lower belly, and even the back. The breath comes from a deeper place, and the diaphragm expands each time. The body is able to store ample breath to sing a complete phrase by expelling the air along with the sound.
In other words, the singer controls the air and uses it to support the tone. And how beautiful a tone it must be.
We speak about athletes at our sessions, about how they “work up a sweat”, and begin to pant as they exercise. For singing, we need that same feeling—-of gasping for air and taking in lots of it.
Dancing with students is something I do always. I take their hands and move around the stage with them as they sing. We move our arms in and out, up and down, we kick, we strut, we circle, and the result is that we stop worrying about ourselves, and get involved in the moment. We have FUN!
This relaxation, along with breathing exercises, helps the student to sing the same song a second or third time in such a way as to sound better, more confident and to add more into the meaning of the piece.
That brings us to another very important point in performing—-forget yourself! Become the music, tell the story, be the character ( if one is singing an operatic aria ), enjoy the experience.
At the end of my Master Class sessions, the students are smiling, they feel successful, and I am happy that I can draw from them some qualities they didn’t even realize they had.
I’ll be holding 2 Master Classes very soon, both in US universities, one in Louisville, Kentucky and the other in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve been working on my Southern drawl.


