Young Gifted Singers

In our society there has always been that young gifted person, whether he is a musician, a singer, pianist, cellist, tennis player or a great mathematical genius. In our "everyday world", we accept these young geniuses and marvel at how young, how smart, or how clever he or she is. We even celebrate their accomplishments.

When I was growing up, I had heard of these young "phenoms" : college at 11 years of age, a great gifted pianist, a great tennis player, etc. Somehow, it is accepted, even today. A classical musician is accepted as a talented gifted performer. A great example of this is Mozart, who from a very early age was writing operas, symphonies, piano concertos. But a singer? "Oh, no, you will hurt your voice if you sing an aria with a high 'C', they mourn", or "you will have a short career if you sing that aria." How many times did Placido Domingo hear that, or Renata Tebaldi, or Nellie Melba.....the list goes on and on, but they continued to have great careers, thumbing their noses at those nay sayers.

The question is, "what are we to do with these young phenoms?" Oh, we could discourage them, take away their pianos, their golf clubs, their tennis racquets, or, to get even, we could send them to public school! We could, but most of us encourage these talents, nurture them, even if we don't understand them. For the gifted singer, it all comes down to one thing--registration. If the teacher knows anything about registration and how the two registers work, one will never have any trouble with the voice. The trick is knowing when to back off the top, when to give more, how to sing through the passagio correctly, and utilizing in tandem both registers correctly.

A good case in point is MARCO DEL RIO, my last featured artist, is a gifted singer. I have worked with him since he was 11 years old. We struggled through the "changing voice" and now he is a tenor, with low notes and high notes. Although he is only 14, he can sing as if he were 25, with a high "C" and beyond. I worked solely on the head register with him, strengthening the head and when the voice was ready, I started applying the chest register and coordinating them together. The result is that the chest register is big, bright and warm and the top is bright and ringing.

I will have a new posting later this week on his new sound. You will hear the before and after the change. You judge.

I have another young phenom, a gifted coloratura soprano with great high notes and a wonderful voice. At competitions, she doesn't win because the judges say she has a beautiful voice, but warn her that she shouldn't sing big arias so soon. How does one define "big"? Is it an aria the judge can sing? Is he judging the voice like a normal 14 year sings or as as a gifted singer who is way beyond her years voice? Truly, these singers should be rated solely upon the singing, how well it was sung, not on her age. The age of the voice at it matures should be the norm for them.

Casey and I have been through the easy arias and its time to move on to more difficult repertoire. She is 14 years old now and she started singing with me when she was 12 years old. Everywhere she goes she charms everyone with her voice, but there is always that old worn out warning........

I am talking about CASEY J. BROWN. She is a beautiful young lady, with great career aspirations. Like all young singers, she does not know how good she is and how good she is going to be. She sings as if she were a 25-30 year old singer. I say, what is wrong with that? What is so wrong about being gifted? We should nurture these young gifted singers instead of scaring them to death with these old wife's tales. Rarely do I find a voice teacher who knows how to teach voice. The students of mine who are already out there teaching are doing a great job. Carolyn Fallin, a former student, has a voice studio in Los Angeles and doing superbly. She knows how to teach and has earned the respect not only of her students but the community at large. It is our mission to teach well, so that our students can continue the legacy founded by Douglas Stanley, William Vennard, Cornelius Reid, and Kenneth L. Nielsen. We owe these great pedagogs who came before us a debt of gratitude.

If I were pushing her voice with too much chest too high, that would be something else. I'm building the voice from the ground up, strengthening the chest and the head voice, mixing the two. She can sing arias like "The Bell Song" , "Musetta's Waltz", "Caro Nome", Juliette's Waltz" and many more with ease. I let the voice dictate to me how much weight the voice can take, and as the voice slowly matures, I keep adding more strength or mixed chest to the top. What kills a lot of singers is that they carry too much weight between C4 and A5 then the top begins to waver, get shrill, then the voice starts on a downward slide. There have been so many sopranos that started out great and in a few years they were gone. If one is careful, the voice will tell you how to proceed and the singer will have a healthy voice for many years to come.

Practice.........ah, that dreadful word! What lengths do we go to avoid it. Singers find that practicing is not in their vocabulary. They have so many other things that they have to do, other than practice, probably because it comes so easy to them and its easy to sing, so why should they work at it? Sometimes its laziness. Gifted singers are very prone to this malady. They try to just "get by" because most times, they can, and if this talent, if known early, were channeled correctly would not be a problem in their teen years and beyond. Yes, its not easy to practice, but one has to make time to practice. To me being second is not an option. If you are gifted, relish that, and practice, practice, practice.


THE FEATURED ARTIST this week is Donn Lamkin. Donn has been working on and off with me for many years, and he has a fabulous operatic voice, quite large and booming, which he uses at will. He is the "Voice Of Disney" at Orlando's Walt Disney World. His is the voice you hear over the loud speaker...."Ladies, and gentlemen, boys and girls......". Listen to that next time you are at Walt Disney World. Donn has been the host of many shows at Disney, but does an interesting "side gig".

For many years, Donn had been vocally impersonating Neil Diamond. He kept asking me for years as to what to do with this talent. As his voice teacher, I was aghast that he would do this to his voice, but finally he wore me down and I gave him my blessing. Today, he has a show, "DiamondRocks", a wonderful show featuring the works of Neil Diamond with performances on cruise ships, concerts in New York, and Florida. I went to his last show and boy, what a treat. It just seemed that the show was over in a half an hour, but it was and hour and a half short! It was so enjoyable. Everyone one was on the aisles singing and dancing and making it a memorable night!

Read his fabulous review in the Daily Sun for the show that he did at the Villages. Also, check out his Facebook page and start following him. For all of his latest and updated events go to his events page.

THE NEXT POST IS ABOUT REGISTRATION, WITH A GENERIC VOICE LESSON WHICH YOU CAN DOWNLOAD AND PRACTICE. PLEASE BE SURE TO "TUNE IN".