Biography
photo: R.vd Berg
Through working with the singing voice and also working with the body in an ongoing search for new elements, I arrived at another approach to the singing voice.
In my youth I sang constantly. My father was my great example here and we sang the tenor part in the choir together, with me next to him standing on a chair. I learned from him what it is to make sound together and what pleasure and life energy singing carries within it. When I became an adult, I grasped the chance to sing at a more professional level. I trained classically at the Conservatorium. My pupils and my choirs, however, always showed me other things outside the rules and the technique of the singing voice, as I had learned them. I found that children in the 13-15 age group could sing with power as well as emotion. We, as adults, search our whole lives for this freedom in our voice. No technique at all offers the skill of throwing a bridge between the emotions of the body and the expression of the voice. Listening to my pupils, but also listening to Edith Piaf, Argentinean tangos, Gypsy music, East European women’s choirs, Indian voices and African voices brought me closer and closer to ideas on a physical form of singing.
Confronted with an illness in which I lost my voice for a long time, ultimately brought me closer to a direction for my work. I felt my voice, broken, but I also felt that my body screamed for songs, expression and passion for life. I began to sing again, with another voice, another sound and another body. In one way there was no difference, but at the same time the difference was so great. I was no longer occupied in singing a song or making a sound, but I tried to open myself in a need for expression. I could feel that my body lived and I could feel that this was the direction of my singing voice. In the Stichting Rondom Stemwerk (Foundation for All round Voice work ), in which I worked for 12 years, all these ideas found their direction when I became acquainted with Primitive Voice work, the voice outside singing and speaking. I learned a lot and gained an enormous amount of experience in various fields. I began to work with children and adults in this period, in both an individual and a group connection. My work slowly began to define itself. The work regards the body as its most important tool. Our body allows its emotion and its power to be seen and this openness shines through in our song. Our voice, our so unique and personal instrument, speaks of us in words and sounds that we do not know, but which at the same time are so linked with our essence, our ‘’being’.
Site : www.andereklank.nl
Comments