A Spectrum of Voices: Prominent American Voice Teachers Discuss the Teaching of Singing.(Book Review)

by Elizabeth Blades-Zeller. Scarecrow Press (4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706), 2002. 228 pp., $45.

Imagine if, as an interviewer/moderator, you could gather together several of the most successful, most recognized voice teachers in America to chat about the art of voice teaching over a long, long period of time--even days or weeks. You could find out about them not only as teachers, but as human beings. You could learn what attracted them to the art and what keeps them attracted to it, in some cases, for decades. Imagine that you could include in the discussion a number of wonderful pedagogues who are no longer living, but whose ideas and convictions live on in their vocal progeny.

Elizabeth Blades-Zeller, herself a singer and vocal pedagogue, essentially has assembled just such a group between the covers of her interesting and well-organized volume. Discussions in the book, an outgrowth of her doctoral thesis, are structured in three major areas: Vocal Concepts, Training Singers and Teachers' Professional Training. Most of her information was-,, garnered through a series of in-person interviews with each teacher, electronically captured for her own reference on audio and videotape. She also gathered information from some with a second taped conversation.

Her selection process of determining whom she would include in her quest is quite interesting in itself. Trying to remove her own bias as a researcher from the selection, she created a survey, which was sent to several universities and conservatories known to have active, important voice departments, as well to the officers and governors of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She asked directly for help identifying "exemplary teachers of applied voice, teaching in the United States." A few names became apparent as widely recognized and respected. Some of those names include (at the time of writing) Marcia Baldwin from the Eastman School of Music; Oren Brown from The Juilliard School; Barbara Doscher (deceased) from the University of Colorado at Boulder; Shirlee Emmons, who teaches privately in New York; Barbara Honn from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia; Richard Miller from Oberlin College Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio; and Laura Brooks Rice from Westminster Choir College at Rider University, as well as several others. There are twenty names in all. It could be argued that other important names were omitted, yet Blades-Zeller acknowledges the difficulty of narrowing down a list of this sort. It is clear she made every effort to objectify selection in a very subjective art form.

The format of each interview begins with a question ...