Teachers as Performers: How Your Teacher's Performance Life Impacts YOUR Singing

Photo cred: Dazzle Jam

Voice teachers were always singers before they were teachers. It wouldn't make sense if they weren't. That would be like coaching hockey having never set foot on the ice.

An effective teacher keeps up with their craft. This could mean professional development in the forms of conferences, performing in community theater, singing with a choir, singing for weddings and funerals, etc. If we don't keep up with our instrument, we will cap our effectiveness as teachers. This is why many professions, particularly education, require documented professional development. Companies would crumble if they stagnate.

So, your teacher should be performing but each teacher's performance life looks different. Some of us travel around the country to give recitals, others do community or equity theater productions, others record original songs, and others play in bands. We teach what we love and live what we love. We quite literally practice what we preach.

When a teacher performs, it forces them to thinking about their performance environment. "What is my purpose in this performance? Am I here to entertain, to comfort, to celebrate? Are my songs classical, contemporary, avant-garde? How can I play/sing this phrase to communicate x. I wonder if trying this new technique will elicit x."

Recently, I discovered in the midst of a potential coughing fit ON STAGE that my vocal tract was narrow and ideal for mixed musical theater singing. I had been trying different vocal postures with my classically trained girls to get them to find their mix as opposed to their classical head voice. I asked them to instigate a cough and for some of them, it finally worked! They finally found their mix! What a random discovery I would have not have found otherwise.

Diverse performance experiences also help us help students understand the fascinating nature of acoustics. For example, when you have no reverb (the capacity to hear your sound in a space; i.e. the echo in a bathroom or through an amp), your perception of your singing is completely different. You have to trust the mechanics of your instrument without the luxury of hearing any feedback. The temptation is to place an unnecessary amount of pressure below your vocal cords, fatiguing your instrument quickly and creating a strident sound... because you were innocently trying to hear yourself! But we know better because we've done it ourselves and can help you.

Beyond the mechanics or acoustics of singing or playing, we intimately understand different performance environments. We understand what makes a show flow, what constitutes a solid audition, how to treat a directing team, how to communicate with band mates, and how to lead choirs. We understand how everyone's role in those communities works and can help our students navigate connecting with others as well as managing conflicts.

Our participating in the community through performance also proves to our students that we keep up with our own instruments. I made sure never to miss faculty recitals for this reason. I was genuinely excited to see my amazing teachers get to do what they love and what they had shared with us in the classroom!

Thus, your teacher is going to perform in the community. This is a given. They are allowed. There is such a large chasm between amateur (which means doing it for the LOVE of it; it does not mean 'bad quality') and professional performing that A LOT of us fall in the middle. Which means there is SO much talent and UNIQUE talent in the middle space. We're career performers and teachers! It would depress us to not perform and it would be unfair to expect us to always be the givers.

Practicing our craft will only ever benefit students, not hinder them.