Julia's Voice Box

How to get started writing songs.

2009-10-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

One of the easiest ways to get into the idea of writing a song is to take an existing song and change the lyrics. This is a technique I often use with my students and mommy and baby groups.

Here's a seasonal song I wrote a number of years ago for my son, to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Here comes ghostie in the night

He wants to give you a fright

With a sheet over his head

Stole it from your granny's bed.

You see him and he sees you

You're the first to whisper......boo

2009-08-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

This is my opening cockney costume, many layers...pretty hot.

2009-08-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Back stage at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, opening weekend. I'm here with Tia and Erin two fellow Lamplighters who showed me how to put in pin curls and attach my wig cap ...which is handy because I change wigs 4 times during the show! It's so hard to be a complete beginner sometimes, but I have been having a lot of fun as well.

2009-08-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

My very favorite contemporary jazz singer Kurt Elling is being interviewed here & among other things he talks about vocalese, jazz poetry and the art of being a jazz singer.

Look on the right hand side for the links to this and his website :)

My favorite recordings by him are:

The Messenger, This Time it's Love, & Live at the Green Mill

Maximum rest for the spine.

2009-07-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

A number of my voice students have been suffering from bad backs over the last couple of weeks and it's not always possible to get to a body-worker for help immediately, so I thought that now would be a good time to share this Alexander Technique exercise that I learnt from my Alexander teacher in London.

Lay on the floor with your spine as straight as you can get it. Rest your head on a couple of paperbacks so that the back of the neck has the opportunity to open and rest. Have your feet flat on the floor with your knees up. Position them so that your knees neither fall open or in on each other. You should be able to hold them in this way and not engage your thigh or buttock muscles.

Put your hands on the fullest part of your belly with your fingertips just touching, elbows as wide as you can. Imagine your back widening and flattening as you let your body sink into the floor. After 20 minutes turn your head to one side and then slowly let your body follow, gradually coming up to all fours and hen upright.

If you can lay in this position for 20 minutes you should feel some real relief and if you do it regularly, only 10 minutes may be needed to feel the benefit. Good luck!

My Fair Lady

2009-07-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

I have been pretty busy for the last month as we get closer to opening night next week. Many of you will know me as a Voice Movement Therapy practitioner, a jazz singer and composer and improviser for circus and theatre and maybe as a a Celtic lullaby singer & unless you know me very well you won't know that this is my first 'proper' musical in 25 years! What's even weirder is that My Fair Lady was the last musical I was in when I was 15. My mother was also in it with me she sang alto and I sang soprano. It's funny, as a tiny little girl I always said "I want to be a singer and an actress" but am only just starting to give myself permission to do both. I am in the ensemble for this show so there has been a lot of dancing to learn (also a new thing for me) as well as remembering how to work within a chorus and with a conductor so it's been quite a stretch for the 'solo make it up as you go along sing from the heart' kind of gal that I can be.

Anyway, if you would like to come and see the show (wonderful cast, great orchestra and fabulous hats!) we open next week in Walnut Creek at the Dean Lesher Center, then Napa Valley opera house, then two weeks at the Yerba Buena Center in SF and closing in Livermore on the last week of August for more details go to the lamplighter's website http://www.lamplighters.org/season.html :) Loverly

Free Lullaby Concerts

2009-06-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

For those of you in the Bay Area, I'm giving a couple of free concerts at the San Rafael library this summer on June 25th & July 16th 2009 at 10.30 am. There will be a mixture of folk tales with songs, songs from Lullaby Island and some songs from the new Beatrix Potter series I've written for Children's Fairyland in Oakland, Rabbit tangos, Blackberries and Milk songs and the like. Come along and bring your wee ones. Lullaby Concerts for families at the San Rafael library 1100 E Street between 5th Ave and Mission San Rafael. Hope to see you there!

2009-06-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

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Opening night of Tosca at the SF Opera

I was lucky enough to go to the opening night of Tosca at the San Francisco Opera last night. Tosca happens to be one of my mother's favorite operas. The desperate & longing filled arias & it's dark opening 'Scarpia chords' bringing to mind, for someone of my generation, Darth Vadar all the way to 11, have been ringing through my ears for more years than I care to remember.

I go to the opera because I want to be rocked to my core by the voices. I want to weep openly in public at the beauty of the thing that is being achieved by the human voice. It doesn't happen often. Recently I was a veritable basket case after The Magic Flute at SF Opera last year. If you EVER get the chance to hear Erika Miklosa play the Queen of the Night do yourself a HUGE favor and go.

Anyway, back to Tosca. For those of you who didn't have Puccini's repertoire drummed into them at the age of 8 here's the low down. Rome in 1800, artist, opera singer nasty bad guy chief of police with huge power in the church and town and escaped convict. Jealously, love, lust, art, betrayal, torture, murder and suicide, I think all those bases are pretty well covered. For the actual story this is a link to the Met's website http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/synopsis.aspx?id=25

Apparently it started out as a play, one which George Bernard Shaw said should have "never have been let past the stage door of the Garrick" it was such a "cheap shocker". He also said "Oh, if it had but been an opera!" Hmmm. Sarah Bernhardt most famously played the role of Floria Tosca in that form and many of the things she brought to the role are kept even today.

Last night soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, made her company debut, singing the role of Floria Tosca. She nailed every note with ease and during her solo in the second act (when she is faced with the choice of giving her body to Scarpia in exchange for the release of her artist lover who is being tortured in the next room) she brought the air in the opera house to complete stillness. There was this sense of a everyone holding their breath, no-one moved or thought about anything but Tosca, her beautiful voice and her terrible predicament.

As Mario Cavaradossi, her artist-rebel of a lover, tenor Carlo Ventre moved everyone to riotous applause during the first & third acts. He has a full and emotion filled voice and I thought he was perfect for the role.

There was something 'silent movie' menacing about Lado Ataneli as Baron Scarpia, he was like an oversized elongated shadow of something with sharp claws creeping along a wall about to pounce at any moment.

So, if you get a chance to go (there are relatively cheap seats to be had believe it or not) it's playing from June 2nd to 26th.

http://www.sfopera.com

2009-05-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

Hello Singers, after many months of trying to figure out how to make my website more fluid I have opted for an attached blog site so that I can communicate information more readily. Here I will post news, notes and ideas and hopefully be able to answer questions you might also have. I look forward to singing with you in the future, but until then.......