Teaching
In both my one-to-one teaching and choir training I take person-centred approach which seeks to meet individuals and groups on their terms. I have taught plucky eight-year-olds, ambitious millennials, committed professionals and passionate OAPs. I have trained cathedral choristers, conservatoire students and the full spectrum of amateur choral singers. The diversity of my performance experience and vocal skills makes me ideally suited for the teaching of all genres, from opera right through contemporary rock and pop. I have benefitted from learning and professional development with leading pedagogues including Janice Chapman, Paul Farrington, Colin Baldy and Dane Chalfin.
From 2015-2018 I taught as Senior Lecturer in Classical Voice at Leeds College of Music, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students and directing the College Chamber Choir. I have also taught one-to-one sessions and masterclasses at King’s College London, where I completed my Ph.D. in 2021 supervised by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. Since September 2018 I have taught the choristers, choral scholars and lay clerks of Peterborough Cathedral Choir, taking individual and group sessions and leading occasional chorister practices.
Research
My PhD thesis considers the relationship between the social contexts of early music singing and the aesthetic agendas of anglophone performance practice researchers. It has a particular focus on the continuing legacy of the Anglican choral tradition and its importance as a training ground for early music singers, researchers and conductors. Its principal research outcome is a text-driven analysis of twenty-four chapters and articles covering music from the Medieval to the Bel Canto periods written by vocal performance practice researchers. This analysis collates a database of statements endorsing particular ways of singing, attitudes and other competencies that the sampled researchers deem appropriate for early music.
I propose that researchers’ commitment to text primacy takes the form of a reverence inherited from the scholastic Anglicanism of Oxbridge chapel environments. This reverence is reflected in the kinds of ethereal, disembodied voices researchers like to hear, voices emulating choirs of angels and functioning as neutral transmitters of logos. Crucially, this text reverence is unconcerned with and unable to account for the somatic eminence of sung sound.
The influence of text reverence on the critical reception of today’s early music singers is considered in a case study chapter on eighteenth-century opera. This chapter examines both historical and modern descriptions of singers and reveals how reverence for historical evidence has allowed sexist vocal paradigms to continue in the modern age. This theme is further explored in an anonymous interview with an industry-leading soprano considers these conclusions in the context of the early music workplace. She notes that these conductors often seek to exact musical control over singers’ bodies, a tendency which frequently manifests itself in attempts at sexual control and associated predatory behaviours.