INVITE DEB TO GIVE A CONCERT

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MY STORY...HOW WHAT I DO DEVELOPED

How I started

I have sung almost from the womb and was in love with music and theatre from a very young age indeed. My first singing competition is still vivid to me – and I won it!

Later, after a great deal of experience as a young soloist and chorister, I gained a music and academic scholarship to a specialist school.

How I stumbled into classical singing

I expanded my experience there for example by playing cello concertos with the school orchestra and taking trips to London for cello lessons with the Head of Cello at the Royal Academy of Music. While I was still at school the Head of Singing at the Academy heard me sing after the examiner of my final singing grade sent me to see her. (I remember my bemused mum sitting listening to this private assessment with her back to me at the other end of this lady’s music salon because she was so nervous for me!)

That afternoon, this lady offered me a place and to teach me at the Academy in addition to first study cello. At that time I wasn’t at all convinced about the sound of the mature classical singing voice let alone opera; in fact I positively disliked it, but she persuaded me to give it a whirl. As I later discovered, she was absolutely right; the poetry drama music and voice of opera is absolutely me.

How I stumbled into the music industry.. pop, sessions etc

Later, as a double first student at the Royal Academy of Music in cello and voice, I met a string player who had some old school friends in a well known cult band at the time. Along with another friend we formed a ‘string trio’ (with myself doubling on voice and cello, and another member doubling on violin and keyboard) donned party clothes, and played classical music as a support act to this band at pretty rough mainstream rock venues; and as a result we were invited for example to perform at London’s West End Dominion Theatre supporting an international artist.

These audiences responded with wholehearted appreciation of our music as we naturally and easily stepped outside of the rigid idiom of our musical culture. I suppose we were amongst the pioneers of what became the global trend of converging contrasting styles and featuring classical musicians with pop and rock bands. At that time, we actually had to hide these exploits from college in order to avoid being thrown out! Dissolving the cultural expectations surrounding it would seems to me to be an important service both to music and it’s listeners.

Having been picked up on at our very first gig by a well known song writing team at the time, we began working with other charting bands. We were featured on global videos, singles and albums, and we were interviewed and performed Mozart and Poulenc on Radio One, the not classical station. The same writing partnership wrote for us with the intention of developing us and releasing a single etc. We bungled the opportunity probably due to a lack of experience and group cohesion.

Working in opera

Meanwhile, my ‘serious skills’ as a singer developed, and at a tender age for a classical singer I was very soon offered my first job in opera with a national opera company where I gained good experience on UK nationwide and foreign tours. I then returned to London partly in order to explore and develop my voice further, working in the West End and on the freelance singing circuit as a classical singer in oratorio, recital, sessions, art, film, adverts etc

More vital (and eccentric!) vocal training; Royal Opera House Covent Garden etc

My teacher post Royal Academy of Music when I returned to London was an incredible and generous man, David Keren, totally devoted to the art of singing as his life’s work. He possessed a remarkable vocal heritage which he was passionate about perpetuating through young singers. He worked with me calmly and methodically over many years on a 2 weekly basis, sometimes performing interesting tricks such as dropping the needle of his gramophone player onto records in just the right groove one after the other in order to make his point.

‘You see dear. These are all the top C’s on this side of the record. You hear the exact same vowel modification whatever the word, now don’t you?’

Well I did, but what I also heard and saw, which amused and endeared me deeply, was a passionate fanatic, illustrating the depth of his authentic and generous commitment to passing on his inheritance. This man was a dear friend.

Musically speaking I had also frankly almost stalked the incredible and unique Norman Feasey OBE senior repetiteur at Covent Garden who was in charge of casting and coaching at the Royal Opera House for 50 years. This gentleman coached Callas, Gobbi, Sutherland, and most of the great singers of his era. A few years earlier I was afforded one single coaching session with him at the Royal Academy when one of the ‘big girl’ singers was ill, and after that I shadowed this man for the set of ‘vocal keys’ he was carrying.

One day after my return to London I saw him an underground train at Covent Garden, and CORNERED him. Thankfully, he remembered me, and from then on I went for regular lessons with him at the Royal Opera House. He taught me deep truths on how to motivate the human voice to work to its technical apex by means of its authentic, built in motivation to communicate. This was the same principle of vocal development in a slightly different form that I was being taught by David Keren at the time.

I would go to Norman’s flat in Queensgate where he would give me strange scampi flavoured snacks and educate me through his archives, anecdotes, recordings, long teas and talks; for example about biofeedback, brainwaves, the optimum mental state for excellent performance and how to achieve it, and how great artists reported and described their experience of it. He shared his extensive collection of amazing recordings and by means of his aural ‘photographic’ memory for every note he had ever taught or heard, he ruminated at length on how different singers had succeeded or failed . And he taught and heard a very great many notes!! This was an overwhelming treasure trove.

I would accompany him to the Royal Opera House and during performances he would talk of the vocal challenges of the singers on the stage in their various roles, the world’s most brilliant artists; and how together they had approached and overcome them. In a deeply endearing, humble and eccentric manner, he insisted time and time again that he was not a singing teacher and knew nothing about singing technique.

I have missed both these dear gentlemen very much indeed since each of them passed away.

Grooming for recording success on the classical fringes of rock music

During this time, by way of wild contrast, I came to record for a well known and iconic rock music record producer experimenting with contrasting genres. Despite our first session starting very badly indeed, it very quickly turned around, and. He put a piece of paper in front of me with French lyrics on it, and no melody and said, ‘SING to this (outlandish) backing.’ I duly opened my mouth and something came out, moving swiftly on to the miles and miles of exacting Wagner that was required… at 5 am and on no sleep.

The collaboration yielded considerable interest when the first track we recorded became a hit in clubs in Paris I suppose I became a bit of a protégé to this man. He had deal with a major label at the time which he put me at the front of. I worked in various vocal and musical styles, and recorded in great studios such as Air 1 on Oxford Street which was probably larger than a football pitch where many great classical recordings were made by people like Caballe. I would contribute to the work we were doing not only by singing but also by improvising and arranging.

Having worked on it for about a year, the project eventually disintegrated soon after a confrontation with this producer in the course of his decisions about how to ‘reinvent’ me, which included a rewriting of certain events in a person’s life. I told him that there were many things I could do for and give to the project, but that I couldn’t ‘give my soul’.

By now, I’d had several brushes with potential significant success during the course of the different aspects of professional work in opera companies West End shows etc. At this point, I went out on the mission field, working in hospitals, communities, and an orphanage in Kenya.

How I stumbled into something yet again different

Afterwards, I was unexpectedly employed in the music department at Kensington Temple London City Church, a large city-wide network of churches. I was responsible for people and things outside both my experience and interest until that point, none of which involved doing any singing at all myself. It looked all wrong, seemed all wrong, but felt somehow right even though I might as well have been on Mars. I certainly NEVER intended or expected to sing there; who does expect to sing on Mars? The thought never even crossed my mind. And anyway, the multicultural community there with over 100 nations represented had little or no apparent taste for classical music.

One day a bit of ‘informal’ jamming caused me to be unwittingly ‘volunteered’ for to sing a song for the congregation. I was bewildered. I thought the suggestion was bonkers. What was I going to sing for these people?? I really expected a very cool reception. But this mixed community were incredibly appreciative of what evolved. I found myself crystallizing previous influences and experience as I drew on a generous resource of singers and musicians of richly varied styles in the team in finding, fusing, recording and performing songs so that together we might meet the needs of the people. Richard Lewis, a contemporary songwriter and very accomplished classical pianist and accompanist was pivotal in this; Later Steven Bennett saw, affirmed and insisted on progressing what I was after when most people I was recruiting to the task frankly thought I was ‘musically barking’; and later, classical ‘grand slam’ pianist, Jakob Rothoff was key to the adventure, as were many other wonderful musicians and singers including Dave Wellington.

Back in large venues

All this led to lots of collaborations at events both huge (and not so huge… but mostly quite huge really) over the years, and recordings too.

Ironically, I found myself singing to people sitting in plush red velvet chairs donated to our building by the Royal Opera House all the time, which gently reminded me of where I had come from on a daily basis when I sang to the people sitting in them. It seemed a subtle affirmation somehow that who I am and what I do as a result of my authentic identity does in fact carve out a route to wherever I am going, however distant and unlikely both the route and the destination may be; even if the journey means abandoning the very identity that initially provoked it. Perhaps purpose was just evolving anyway, by means of a path apparently irrelevant to anything I might ever have imagined or attempted to plan.

... and then... back to the music industry

I began to feel that this time was coming to a close, along with a growing desire to extend the reach of the music to a wider audience; to go back to the music industry, in some way back to my ‘starting blocks’ so to speak.

I am immeasurably grateful to Colin Dye for the opportunity and support he gave to develop and distill this music.

I am also extremely grateful to the vast cross section of all kinds of people who have enabled, appreciated and absolutely paid for it in the past. Thank you very much.