London to New York

I have come into New York City for several days, mainly to hear Yevgeny Kutik in his Alice Tully Hall debut this evening with the Riverside Symphony.

Last night I saw Noel Coward's Private Lives  at the Music Box Theatre. Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross played the two main roles, Amanda and Elyot, very well indeed. I have seen many productions of this play, including one where, for some reason, the locale was changed to South America and everyone spoke with a Spanish accent. That made no sense whatsoever since all the humor is a British as Paddy's pig. 

Last night's production also featured Anna Madeley and Simon Paisley Day as Sybil and Victor and Caroline Lena Olsson as Louise, the maid.

Act one is definitely the best part of the play when Amanda and Elyot, having been divorced, find themselves in adjoining suites on their honeymoons with their new spouses. Acts two and three get a bit langweilich  with the repeated fighting and making up. But the dialogue, as always with Coward, is brisk and funny.

Returning to New York after ten days in London is an interesting experiece. In comparing the two cities, the whole tempo of life is different. The British are more laid back in their activities around town. In New York, the fact that Broadway, from 47th street to Times Square, is now a pedestrian mall, has made that area even more frantic than ever. Groups of tourists simply stand in one place, making it next to impossible to walk in a straight line.  And of course several bus routes have had to change. My old faithful, the 104, now goes down Seventh Avenue from 59th street south instead of Broadway.

Now to Yevgeny Kutik, whose new album, Sounds of Defiance, is available at http://www.marquisclassics.com/

Tonight Yevgeny outdid himself, playing the recently discovered Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in D minor.Yehudi Menuhin was responsible for having rescued it from obscurity. Mendelssohn was thirteen years old at the time. This is the work of a very young genius. And it was performed by a very young genius. I have been following Yevgeny's career ever since he was the first winner of the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation Scholarship eight years ago. He blew us away then and he continues to do so now, especially tonight. His very special combination of technique, musicianship, and passion, make him the violinist to watch in this decade. I have heard them all, from Heifitz on, and he is a major talent. Bravo, Maestro!

The program opened with Antiphonies by Donald Crockett, a New York City premiere. After a frantic first movement it settled down into a decent piece. It is written in concerto grosso style, with small groups alternating with full orchestra.

The concert ended with Haydn's lively Symphony #83 in G minor. The Riverside Symphony is a fine ensemble and the conductor, George Rothman, is splendid.

London Again!

I have just returned from ten days in Merrie Olde England, mostly in London at the Park Lane Hotel. London is getting trimmed within an inch of its life in Christmas holly and everything else imaginable. It's a great time to be there.

I had some interesting musical and theatrical experiences while I was there.

First was a master class in voice led by Roderick Williams held at the Royal College of Music. He is a lyric baritone who has sung at the English National Opera, Covent Garden and on the continent. He taught a spirited class of singers, mainly working with interpretation, stage presence and the like. Not much was said about vocal technique.

 The first to sing was a young Asian tenor who performed 'Ah, mes amies' from La Fille du Regiment of Donizetti. He certainly had the high 'C,s' in abundance needed for this aria but they were a little hard on the ears. Williams tried to get him to ease up a bit through what he was doing physically in interpretation. It didn't help a great deal. The voice was still overly bright and pushed. In fact all of the singers had this quality, what the British call singing with 'Blade'. Blade is right! It cuts right through your ears!

I was attending the class with my friend and former student, Nigel Brookes, who is a graduate of the College. I asked him if it was the accoustic of the room or simply the way they were singing that made the sound so edgy. We decided it was the singers themselves.

Then a young Irish soprano with a really lovely voice sang 'Ch'il bel sogno' from Puccini's La Rondine. She is a very good singer, but again pushes the top where she really doesn't need to.

Then a tenor, who was the singer I liked best, sang 'Fatto inferno e il mio petto' from Rodelinda of Handel. His voice had more color and freedom than any of the other singers.

Then followed a soprano, another tenor, and a mezzo, none of whom was impressive. The mezzo in particular had vocal problems that suggested tension and a lack of freedom. She was developing a wobble, which at any age, but especially in a young woman, is not a good thing.

Mr. Miller bounded on and off the stage with an ease that I envy and congratulated all of the singers on how well they sang. I can't bound anymore, and I had a very different take.

I attended a performance of The Lion in Winter by James Goldman at the Theatre Royal Haymarket starring Robert Lindsay as Henry II and Joanna Lumley as Eleanor of Aquitaine. Both excellent actors in a well staged production. It was interesting to compare it to the film with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.



Then, a night at the Opera! The ENO, or English National Opera, for their production of Eugene Onegin. It was sung in English as are all their productions but it might as well have been sung in the original Russian for all the words you could catch. Fortunately, there were super titles! It was an odd production which has not had wonderful reviews. The first act takes place in a barn for some reason instead of Tatyana's home. Tatyana was sung by Amanda Achailaz, who sang with lots of 'BLADE'! A review refered to her voice as steely, which it was, and is totally wrong for the role. The Onegin of Audun Iversen was very well sung and acted. The star, to my way of thinking, was Toby Spence, who looks like a young Robert Redford and sings like a young Jussi Björling. What a great young singer-actor. The score is to die for; Tchaikowski at his most romantic.

Toby Spence         

 Audun Iversen

One more musical evening found me at Crazy for You!, a Gershwin musical that never really was. I think someone has taken a lot of Gershwin's songs and put them together into this flimsy pastiche of a story. But who cares? S'wonderful! Sean Palmer is  the perfect leading man, dark, handsome, and he can really sing and dance, Claire Foster plays the hometown girl he falls in love with way out west. Guess what? She has an abandoned theatre so they put on a show.  And what a show it is. It was a very gay final evening in London.         

E Books

Thanks to my technical mentor Ryan Salame, my two most recent books are now available as E Books from Amazon.

Case Studies in Vocal Pedagogy deals with the voice teacher as psychologist. As an E Book it is $9.99. If you would like to order a soft cover copy, it is $20.00.

Take Two Deep Breaths and Call Me in the Morning, is a singer's guide to deep breathing.
It is also $9.99 as an E Book and $20.00 as a soft cover copy. I have dedicated this book to my dear friend, Phyllis Curtin, on the occasion of her 90th Birthday. Happy Birthday, Phyllis!


To order on line  http://www.amazon.com/  Select 'Kindle Books' and type in my name. They will download automatically.


To order a soft copy of either book by mail, send a check made out to Herbert Burtis, to 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255.

My previous books are all available in soft cover only.

Sing On! Sing On!  is $15.00
Vocalizing from the Ground Up!  is $35.00
How to Make your Arm into a Wet Noodle is $40.00.

Lorraine at BAM 1994

 In the recent issue of Opera News Philip Kennicott has written a wonderful article about repeatedly seeing Lorraine Hunt as Médée at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1994. I remember these performances well. On one occasion, I met several of my vocal students in Brooklyn for dinner and we went to a performance afterwards. It was mesmerizing. Kennicott speaks of the emotional impact her performance had on him, as it did on the entire audience. We all went backstage afterwards to give her hugs and kisses.

Always, within a voice lesson, Lorraine never held back or 'marked'. She poured her heart and soul into every note she sang. We would sometimes work for three hours at a clip. We were always equal partners, rather than teacher and student. We both had the same aim in view. Musical, vocal, and emotional perfection. As emotionally involved as she was in every lesson, each time I would later witness her performance on stage I was blown away by the power it contained. She would turn a performance into a living breathing moment of joy, sadness, anger, whatever. She left you spent, having merely been in the audience.

She sang for Les Arts Florissants  for several seasons in Paris as well as several times at BAM. William Christie, the director of the group, had studied conducting with John at Harvard years before.

John and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, went to Paris a year or so later, for her début at the Salle Garnier in Hyppolite et Aricie, again with Les Arts Florissants. It was an evening I will always cherish.

It makes me both sad and happy when something like this article brings her back into my life. Sad that she is gone, and happy that her great art has stirred the emotions of so many people.

She was unique.

I hope that you will read the article.

Caballe at 79

Tonight on Connecticut Public Broadcasting featured Nicolay Baskov, tenor with guest artists Monserrat Caballe and her daughter Montserrat Marti.
 

Baskov is a handsome young tenor with an Italianate voice. In the 'Libiamo'  from La Traviata both he and Monti take superb high 'c's' at the end of the duet. Otherwise he seems to favor Italian popular songs. But the man can sing. He is a cross between Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Andrea Bocelli. He has the looks and white hair of Dmitri and a much better voice than Bocelli. Apparently in real life he is a blond.

The program seemed to be a mish-mash of operatic arias and duets,  Italian songs, and Broadway hits. Marti, at the end of one duet from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, wound up screaming the final high notes.




Caballe appeared with him in a silly sort of duet called 'Kalinka' and proved that at age 79 she can still sing. She laid out a high 'A' at the end that many of today's sopranos half her age might envy. Nikolay apparently studied with her. Not a bad teacher to have!

I would love to hear him minus the big Radio City production and without a microphone. This was what killed Bocelli when he appeared in Detroit un-miked in an opera and no one could hear him. Nikolay has performed at the Bolshoi in Yevegny Onegin, Prince Igor, Traviata, and other legitimate operatic roles so I presume that the voice is the real thing. I look forward to hearing him in a live situation.

It's quite a voice!

Anna as Anna

Having read several mixed reviews of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, the recent Met production which starred Anna Netrebko, I was looking forward to seeing it in HD at Monmouth University in Long Branch, NJ this weekend. I attended the screening with several friends whom I was visiting while in the Garden State.

The production is hampered by a bleak, rather ugly set that appears to be a series of gray walls. In the days of Henry VII I have a feeling that royal palaces, at very least, had some furniture. More than the bright red bed which, while appropriate to Henry's reputation, left a lot to be desired scenically. When singers were required to sit, they had to plop down on ledges that projected from the gray walls.

This is the first time I have heard Netrebko in person. It is an amazing instrument, but I am not a fan of the kind of 'covering' she employs. While this worked in mid-range sections of the role, she changed position when she had to sing a high note. At this point, she visibly adjusted, physically and vocally, to get rid of the weight that is caused by covering. While the voice has a creamy sound, it is almost as if someone else is doing the singing behind her somewhere. I would love to hear what she would sound like with a more forward projection throughout the range.



At the end, she goes through a door in the wall, pulls her hair to one side, and prepares to have her head cut off. High above her appears the executioner with an axe in his hands. I believe that, as with all royal executions, for Anne Boleyn, a French executioner was used who wielded a sword instead of an axe.

The role of Jane Seymour, Anne's lady in waiting and Henry's wife-to-be was sung by Ekaterina Gubanova, a Russian mezzo-soprano, who sings much more in the tradition of many Russian singers of the past. Her brilliant voice is really fine and she sang with great energy and passion.
Unlike some of her predecessors she does not 'Take the paint off the wall' with her brilliant voice. It would be nice to find a nice mutation of her voice with Netrebko's. You'd have the heavy cream plus the brilliance. When we can clone singers, that might actually happen.

In the scene where Henry is trying to get Jane into bed, he seems to be kneading bread as he wrestles with her, ignoring her pleas to wait until they are married. I wondered if she were black and blue at the end of the performance.

Oldar Abdrazakov, as Henry, has a very good and powerful voice. He is an imposing personage on stage, looking very kingly. He tends to push his very low notes, making them thin out a bit, and overworks his jaw to excess. He also pulls his tongue back into his throat a lot of the time.This tenses the instrument and thickens the sound.


 


For a voice teacher, the advantage of the close-ups the camera provides, which I would never be able to see in the house, allow a voice teacher the opportunity to look right down the singers' throats, just as I often do in a lesson. It is important for the teacher, and especially for the singer, to know what's going on in there. Voice teachers, especially I, should probably not be allowed to go to opera productions like this one since we can't stop teaching in our heads as we see fine singers doing energy-wasting, vocally unpleasant things. And we can't say 'Wait a minute, let's fix that!'

Lord Richard Percy was sung by Stephen Costello, a  good tenor, who started out a bit roughly vocally, but who got better as the opera went along and began singing rather well later on.

Tamara Mumford, mezzo, sang the pants role of Mark Smeaton. She has a good voice, if a little uneven at times, and certainly looked the part.

The roles of Lord Rochford and Sir Hervey were sung by Keith Miller and Eduardo Valdes.

Overall I was disappointed in the production. A more exciting set would have provided a better mood for the action to take place in. I wish that I had heard Beverly Sills or Joan Sutherland sing the role.

Alas, it's too late for that to happen.

Chapter Three

I am being propelled into making this into a book. I had an email from a friend saying 'When are you going to talk about using your air to sing?'

I guess now is as good a time as any.

Once we have taken this free, low breath, what do we do with it? 

We sing!

As I said in the previous chapter, the inhalation-to-sound rhythm is like the bounce of a tennis ball. Inhale as the ball strikes the floor and sing as you catch it. Ka-boom. If you hold the breath, even for an instant, you shut down the vocal apparatus. It also gives you time to 'manage' the breath-to-sound instant. In this case, managment is a bad thing. Olga Averino always spoke about singing from 'Impulse'. That is a very good thought. You should basically inhale the phrase you plan to sing. Your inhalation should be lively; not a gasp, but lively. Lively in-lively out. A slow drawn-out inhalation prepares you to yawn; that's about all.

Everything we do in life requires energy. In singing, our air is our energy. We stymie this by slowing down the breath-to-sound process.

An instant release of sound from the deep, open-throated, relaxed larynx inhalation should be a free, beautiful sound. I just witnessed this happen, yet again, in a student who began studying with me recently. I worked with her on the breathing exercises I have already mentioned, did some work on focus as detailed in my books on singing, and she instantly produced a free, wonderful sound. She was amazed at how quickly and easily this happened. It was an example of free energy at work.

There are several focus exercises I use; humming, duck call, and so on, when the voice is out of focus. But in general, when the air works this way, the voice finds its focus without outside help. A free release of sound automatically locates the resonators, and vibrates, finding the overtones in the sound, and sounding great.

I also do a 'Slow Release of Air Exercise' that I stole from Monserrat Caballe who was being interviewed by the flutist Ransom Williams in Opera News  some years ago. She suggested taking a deep breath and then letting it escape. No pushing of the air. You won't even hear the air escaping. When your mouth is full of air, a little place in your lips will open and a tiny stream of air will escape. It's like sticking a pin in a tire. You produce a slow leak. You then time how many seconds of release you can achieve. I have had students go over a minute with this exercise.

Obviously, this is a lot less air than we use at the time of singing, but it gives us a very good idea of how much air our lungs can hold.

Turning air into sound should be an instant simple event. Too many singers complicate it in various ways that make it difficult. Sing from the impulse of the deep breath hitting your pelvic bone and bouncing right back up into sound, like the tennis ball.

This friend also mentioned that ballet dancers and Pilates practitioners advocate high breathing. Frankly, I don't see the point of this. To my way of thinking, high breathing involves tension, holding, in the lower abdomen. Tension is the enemy of good singing. In Yoga the deep breath is paramount. In singing, it is as well.

This friend also pointed out that good posture is not a part of everyone's body. Stand against the wall so that your back and buttocks touch. The back of your head may or may not be touching, depending upon how you are built. This should give you an idea of good posture.

Lie on the floor. Place a small pillow under your head so your head is not pulling back to touch the floor. Again, you should get a good idea of a straight line for your body.

Good posture should be a comfortable sensation. A military stance is not required. Tension should play no part in the alignment of your body.

Look into a mirror a see what you look like when standing in comfortable posture. Have your teacher or coach help you to achieve this way of standing.

Our entire body is our instrument as singers. Getting it into a good posture is like putting your clarinet together. Unless you assemble it correctly, it won't play!

Once this is all in order, the act of singing is mostly a mental and emotional operation. Again, quoting Olga, 'If you think what it is you want to happen, it may just do that'.

Take a deep breath and call me in the morning.

This is apparently going to be chapter two of my sixth book. (NOT!)

My recent posting on the subject of the term and physical action of Appoggio and reaction to it has got me off on another tangent. I have heard, and been taught, so many different and disparate methods of singing breathing that I feel the need to put in print the method I use in my own teaching.

My first voice teacher, when I was in high school, was an aging tenor who emphasized the need to have very strong abdominal muscles. He would have me stand on his stomach in my stocking feet while he lifted me up and down. I was six feet, three inches, even in high school. It's a wonder I didn't kill him.

So the first point I will make in talking about breathing is: Don't do this! It won't help the singer and you may do damage to yourself.

When I went to college I studied with a soprano who never said a great deal about breathing, so I have no idea what her theory was on the subject. Apparently, many voice teachers have little or nothing to say about breathing.

Point two: Breathing is the absolute basis for singing. It is important that as a singer and/or a teacher you figure out how to incorporate a good breathing technique into your vocal equipment.

The first woman I studied with in New York City emphasized the use of the umbilicus muscle. That's the muscle right around your belly button. She wanted us to tug that muscle each time we began to make a singing sound. She had students who sang at the Met, so for them I guess it must have worked. Either that, or they simply ignored her suggestion. I know that I did.

Two of my students from years ago also did some work with Eleanor Steber. She was a very great singer. Apparently she taught this umbilicus thing, too. I still don't advise it.

Point three: Don't yank on your belly button, or anything else down there, when you are singing. Yanking creates tension; tension creates bad singing.

The next two teachers I studied with never had much to say about breathing at all. They both had students who starred at the Met so they must have been doing something right. Not that everyone who sings at the Met is a great singer! But I learned other important things about singing from each of them that I use in my own teaching to this day.

So here we are. One from Column A and one from Column B.

Or none of the above.

My theory, which I arrived at through about sixty years of teaching and coaching voice, is based on the fact that everyone breathes. That is an important part of living. The body seems to know how to keep us breathing all night long when we are asleep. We don't have to wake ourselves up and say, 'Breathe, dummy!' In fact, nearly everyone breathes deep, belly breaths all night long, however they may breath during the day or when they are singing.

Perhaps we have hit on something. Deep breathing is so easy to do you can do it in your sleep. Why not do it when you sing?

This is where my method of breathing begins. Singing breathing should be deep and relaxing, while still being energetic. Just as our abdominal muscles move in and out all day and night long when we are doing other things, they can probably do that when we sing without our getting in the way. Because that's exactly what we do when we push or pull abdominal muscles while singing. We get in the way of a natural physical activity and create tension. Tension is the killer of good singing.

Many people, for one reason or another, develop a habit of using a high breath all day long. This is not particularly healthy but if all you are doing is sitting, standing, chatting, who cares? Some people develop the habit of holding their abdominal muscles to look thin. Get a size larger shirt and stop holding. It is not sensible to breath one way all day long and then try to breath correctly when you start to sing. It probably won't happen.

For singing YOU MUST OPERATE FROM A FREE, LOW BREATH. End of story.

Now, how do you find this free, low singing breath if that is not your habit? Here is how I work with a new student in solving this question.

First of all, check your posture. Your body should be in a tall, straight, easy line. No zigs and zags. Elaine Brown, my conducting teacher from years ago, suggested that we imagine a pendulum hanging down the center of our body. Centering. This is easy to do. This easily gets our body into a comfortable, straight line.

Your collar bone should be the highest part of your rib cage.Learn to maintain that position without tension or stress. This puts our rib cage in the optimum position for singing in a free, relaxed way. Or just for every day good breathing. Do not feel that you are holding your body in this way, just allow it to find this position as comfortably as possible.

I then suggest to my students that they mentally transplant their lungs from their actual locale in the rib cage to the space below the belly button. No real surgery required. Place your hands in this area and say to yourself, 'These are now my lungs'.

Now inhale and fill them.

ALWAYS INHALE THROUGH THE MOUTH FOR SINGING! A nose breath will cause you to hold your lips together, shut your teeth, and send your tongue to the roof of your mouth. This is not the optimum way to prepare to make a singing sound. You have just completely closed your instrument. Nose breathing is fine for 'keeping your motor running' during musical introductions and phrases where you are not actually singing. But to sing, breath through the mouth!

Through your easily opened mouth (no pushing down), inhale, listening for the sound of 'Ah or Aw' as the air goes down your windpipe. There is no way you can get a high breath using this inhalation. I've tried; I always get a deep, relaxing breath.

Allow the air to go down in a lively manner. A slow inhalation will mean an unenergetic response of sound. I sometimes have singers bounce a tennis ball to feel the rhythm of inhalation to sound. When the ball hits the floor, Inhale, when you catch it, Sing. This does not give you time to fiddle around with the air you just inhaled. Do not inhale and hold the air for a second. One of my teachers wanted us to do this. What this does is cause your vocal cords to close and your epiglottis to close. Your body assumes you are going to swallow and it doesn't want you to drown. This is a natural defense the body employs to keep you from choking. Vocally, when this happens, you will need to blow open the cords and epiglottis to make a singing sound. This is unattractive and not healthy for your larynx.

There are various breathing exercises you can do to practice this kind of 'Singing Breathing'. I mention several in my various books on singing.

You should create an imaginary curved line just behind your head around which the inhalation speeds and comes right back out as sound.

Singing should be a relatively easy occupation. I am amazed at how complicated many singers make it out to be.

Of course, we must go beyond this initial stage of developing a good breathing technique. As singers and teachers we must work on singing  a musical, emotional phrase, singing every language as if we were a native of that country, developing ourselves into a musical artist.

Nobody wants to listen to technique.

But without this underpinning, this method of breathing on which to send our song into the world, no one is going to want to hear a poorly performed song either.

To be a good singer, or a good oboeist, or whatever, we need to develop all of our musical skills.

Breathing is the basis of all the other musical qualities we possess. Learn to use it wisely.

Push-pull, click-click

A student recently asked me to define 'appoggio' and 'covering' for her. Neither of these is a term I use in my teaching. Covering I do know is a pulling back of sound rather than allowing it to surge forward from the instrument. In some people's heads, the sound they hear when doing this is rounder and darker. To my ear it is swallowed and out of focus. Don't do it.

Appoggio is a different problem. Appoggiare in Italian means 'to lean', as in an appoggiatura where one pitch 'leans' into a second pitch. It is also defined as meaning 'to press' or 'to hold'. These are not singing principles I agree with.

In singing, appoggio does not seem to have the definition of 'leaning'. In reading Shirlee Emmons's article on 'Breath Management', she quotes Richard Miller from his book Training Soprano Voices to support (pardon the pun) her theory of appoggio. To begin with, I do not train soprano voices much differently than alto voices or bass voices, bar the obvious range and passaggio differences. A good singing technique should apply to any voice part. Miller, in his definition of  appoggio also suggests tucking in the lower abdomen. In my opinion, this merely causes tension.

The abdominal muscles should move freely in and out without pushing, pulling or tucking. I use a breathing exercise wherein the singer takes a deep breath and then allows the air to escape. The singer doesn't push the air out. It's as if you stick a pin in a tire and develop a slow leak. You then time the release. I have had students exhale over a minute with this release. Toward the end of the breath, the abdominal muscles certainly do come in and up. But THEY do it, you are not pulling them in!

This is a perfectly natural way that these muscles operate. When you cough or sneeze, when you cry 'Watch out!!!' to someone about to be hit by a bus, they perform a more violent version of this movement. You are not pulling on them. This is an involuntary reaction to an event. 

Miller also speaks of the expansion of the chest upon inhalation. This is perfectly true, but it should, again, happen naturally, not  through purposeful pressures to expand and contract the rib cage. This only produces more tension. Tension is the enemy of good singing.

William Vennard, the noted writer and teacher, has said that vocal teachers should spend more time on phonation than on breathing techniques. I disagree whole-heartedly with this concept. The breath is the basis of singing. We are wind instruments. Everything else will follow when one develops a free breathing system. Without a good breathing system, you can phonate your head off and never learn how to sing.

With almost very new student who comes into my studio I find I must begin to insure that they can use a deep, energetic breath before we do anything else. I do not ever use the term SUPPORT in regards to the breath. I find that with most people, this word means to them: 'holding or pushing the abdominal muscles', which makes the whole body rigid. This is no way to begin to sing.

Then I work on 'focus'- phonation- whatever you want to call it. But trying to get good focus on a tense breathing system is a waste of time.

Another source speaks of 'taking a breath and then pushing in your belly muscles to move the diaphragm. Push-pull, click-click! More tension!


Emmons's main point seems to be that the chest cavity should be in a high position. This is fine with me. I simply tell singers 'Your collar bone should be the highest point of your body without tension'. Basically I am talking about good posture.

She also says that 'the descent and ascent of the diaphragm are not directly controllable.' Right on. But she then says that 'Appoggio singing retains the inspiratory posture of the sternum and ribcage, retarding the ascent of the diaphragm.'

Hmm. I thought that the speed of the diaphragm's movement was not 'directly controllable'.

Miller apparently dislikes the term 'belly breathing'. 'Your lungs are up here!' That's how a student of mine almost stopped singing when a new teacher at her University tried to change her low breathing habit which was working just fine. She left the teacher, came back to work with me outside the University,  and went right on singing beautifully.

I know where my lungs are. Everyone does. But I ask students to mentally transplant their lungs below the belly button and inhale, listening to the sound of 'ah or aw' as the air goes down the wind pipe. You instantly get a deep, relaxed breath which is ready to go to work at once to produce a free, beautiful sound. Breath should go into the lungs and be returned immediately as sound without a second of holding. When one takes this kind of breath, not only does the singer get a deep, relaxing inhalation, he relaxes the larynx simultaneously.

Emmons goes on to suggest that the singer not allow the chest to go up and down with inhalation and exhalation. Great! Me, too! But then she speaks of 'sideways' inhalation. This term puzzles me. Popeye may inhale sideways, (look at his mouth), but for singers this is a strange suggestion to my way of thinking. 'Inhale sideways, not frontways', she says. I have no idea how to do that.

She speaks of how the ribs will expand- which is great. But unless the abdominal muscles are allowed, not made, to expand as well, you are going to get a high breath.

So beyond the point of keeping the collarbone high and allowing the chest to expand with the inhalation, I still don't know what this definition of appoggio has to do with free singing. It is just too busy to allow instant access to your sound.

Like a well-known politician, I guess I am a maverick; but a number of my students have had wonderful careers without covering or appoggio.

Another source speaks of using appoggio to 'retain' air in the lungs. As Olga Averino said, 'Lose your air'. To my way of thinking, appoggio is apt to create tension in the breathing process. Here is the 'holding' part of the definition of the word.

Too many rules spoil the singer. It leaves no time for singing.

The singing process should be a simple one. Learn to take a deep breath and use it at once to produce a sound. In a lively, relaxed body, everything else that has to do with singing should flow effortlessly into infinity.

I hadn't planned to write my sixth book today, but my student's question got me up on my soapbox about this subject. It also made me really think about this term, appoggio, which I have never used in my own teaching. So thank you, Anita, for getting me interested in talking about this questionable technique.

Why make something simple complicated?

Amen!