Conference Speakers

Go to: Paul Kiesgen, Neil Semer, Ron Morris, Coral Gould, Heidi Pegler, Dr. Meribeth Dayme.

Professor Paul Kiesgen

Paul Kiesgen holds B.Mus and M.Mus degrees from Northwestern University School of Music. He is Professor of Voice at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. In addition to studio voice, he teaches courses in vocal pedagogy for master of music and doctor of music students. He served as chairman of the voice department from 2001 to 2004. His students have sung in major venues throughout the world.

Mr. Kiesgen has been a member of National Association of Teachers of Singing since 1973 and. has served as a national vice president and as president of both the Chicago and Northern Arizona chapters. He has been elected to membership in the Chicago Singing Teachers’ Guild and the American Academy of Teachers of Singing, and he has been listed multiple times in both Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and Who’s Who in America.

He appears frequently as a clinician and presenter for national meetings of the Music Teachers National Association and appeared as a presenter along with colleagues from the American Academy of Teachers of Singing at the sixth International Congress of Voice Teachers in Vancouver in 2005. He has also presented papers for the First International Conference on the Physiology and Acoustics of Singing in Groningen, Holland, and for the 2006 national conference of National Association of Teachers of Singing.

Mr. Kiesgen has been a guest teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, Accademia Internazionale delle Arti in Rome, and the Shanghai and Sichuan Conservatories in China. He has served on the faculty of the Aria International Summer Academy in Canada, The Voice Foundation’s Care of the Professional Voice seminar in Philadelphia, and the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. He was a master teacher for the 2000 NATS Intern Program. Professor Kiesgen’s articles have been published by Choral Journal, Classical Singer Magazine, Journal of Singing and Vox Humana, the official journal of the German Voice Teaching Association. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Singing.

Paul Kiesgen has performed leading roles with Opera Illinois, Hinsdale Opera, Skylight Opera of Milwaukee, Music Theatre of Wichita, Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera, and Chamber Opera Chicago. He has sung with the Goldovsky Opera on three national tours and has appeared as leading bass in more than a dozen roles with the Israel National Opera in Tel Aviv. Mr. Kiesgen has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Wichita Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Chicago Academy of Early Music and the Chicago-based ensemble, Music of the Baroque. Other solo appearances have included concerts with Chicago’s Contemporary Chamber Players and Grant Park Concerts, and performances in Italy with the Rome Festival. He has sung several leading roles with Chicago Opera Theater including that of Rev. Winemiller in the PBS television production of Summer and Smoke for the Great Performances series.

Web Site: www.kiesgen.com

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Neil Semer

Neil Semer teaches voice and gives workshops internationally on the subject of vocal technique and performance practice. His main voice studio is in New York. He teaches regularly also in Toronto, Paris, Bern, and throughout Germany. In July-August 2008 he will lead the 12th annual Neil Semer Summer Vocal Institutes in Coesfeld and Aub, Germany.

His teaching combines the old Italian School of Bel Canto as expounded by Giovanni Battista Lamperti with scientific understanding of vocal function. The focus is coordination of the heart, mind and body.

His students sing leading roles in Opera around the world and star in Broadway productions. In July 2004, he was the keynote speaker and master teacher for the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Convention in Sydney.

Masterclasses given around the world include the 5th International Congress of Voice Teachers in Helsinki, all three Annual International Classical Singer Conventions, the Royal Academy of Music and the Association of English Singers and Speakers in London, two National Conventions of the National Association of German Singing Teachers (Hamburg and Wurzburg), the Leipzig, Hannover and Wurzburg Hochschule's, Swiss Voice Teachers Association in Zurich, Australian NATS Chapters in Sydney and Brisbane, Queensland and Newcastle Conservatoriums, two Canadian Voice Care Foundation Symposia in Toronto and Banff, NATS National Convention in Seattle, NATS Winter and Summer Workshops in Miami, Princeton, Minneapolis and New York, NATS New England, Mid-Atlantic and Central Regional Conferences, NATS Chapters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Wisconsin, Orlando, Salt Lake City, Michigan and Miami, and innumerable universities.

Faculties have included the Canadian Opera Company, American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Austria, New England and Boston Conservatories, New York University, and Barnard College.

Web site: www.neilsemer.com

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Ron Morris

Ron Morris, Speech Therapist, Audiologist and Counter-Tenor, graduated from the University of Queensland in 1985 with an honours degree in speech therapy and audiology. Ron also holds a Performer’s Certificate from Trinity College London and completed a Master of Music Studies (Vocal Performance) in 2001 at Griffith University’s Conservatorium of Music studying with Margaret Schindler.

As a speech therapist, Ron has a broad clinical experience with both paediatric and adult caseloads. He has special interest in therapy for patients with head and neck surgery, voice disorders and articulation disorders. Ron has worked for many years with both children and adults who have significant hearing impairment. This has given him a unique set of skills in identifying and remediating disorders and inefficiencies in the articulatory system. Because of his own singing background, Ron has become more and more interested in helping singers to vocal efficiency through work on breathing, support and articulation. In this capacity, he lectures and runs classes at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and has lectured at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Ron has contributed to Janice Chapman’s recent book ‘Singing and Teaching Singing: A Holistic Approach to Classical Voice’, helping to make the links among the speech therapist, singing teacher and singer.

Ron continues to work as a speech therapist, working in private practice and in a head and neck surgery and voice unit in a large private hospital in Brisbane. He continues to sing professionally and in St John’s Cathedral (Brisbane) Choir. In an ongoing fit of madness, he is currently enrolled in a PhD, evaluating the Accent Method of Breathing in young classical singers.

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Coral Gould

Coral Gould first qualified as a teacher at Birmingham College of Education, where she specialised in Music, Movement and Drama. She continued music studies and obtained diplomas in school music, piano and singing.

Her class teaching career was spent in both Independent and State schools, where she taught music to all age groups including adults. She now has a busy private teaching practice. She was a member of the vocal staff of the Birmingham Junior Conservatoire from 1999 - 2007. Numerous current freelance projects include vocal teacher training.

During her time at Abbots Bromley School, Staffordshire she toured Hungary and Vienna with the school choir and attended the Kodaly Festival in Debrecen, Hungary.

She undertook an exchange teaching period in the USA during the late eighties.

Her professional performing career included soprano solo work and piano accompanying.

She Has produced and directed Music Theatre Productions and is Conductor of the Coral Gould Singers. She is General Secretary of the Association of Teachers Of Singing and an Examiner for London College of Music, a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians and the British Voice Association. She is an adjudicator member of the British and International Federation of Festivals.

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Heidi Pegler

Heidi studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Trinity College of Music, London. She is currently Head of Singing at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith, where she runs a lively and busy singing department and is an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Heidi was part of a team overseeing the new ABRSM Singing Syllabus due out in the summer 2008. She was a contributor on both A Common Approach 2002 (Faber) and All Together! (ABRSM) a book focussing on peripatetic teaching in groups. She edited and devised The Language of Song (Faber) with friend and colleague, Nicola-Jane Kemp, a series of songbooks developed to help young singers sing successfully in foreign languages. The Elementary and Intermediate books won Best Educational Publication at the Music Industry Awards (2007). She is currently working on the Advanced Book which is due to be published in September 2008.

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Dr. Meribeth Dayme

Dr Meribeth Dayme, director of The Alchemy Programme for Singers, is a well-known authority on singing and the human voice, a performance coach, master class leader, speaker, and author. A former university professor of both singing and anatomy, her books Dynamics of the Singing Voice, The Performer’s Voice, The Singing Book, Creating Confidence, (e-book), and The Little Book About Singing (e-book) embody her mission to help performers sing easily, healthily and joyfully. Her courses, including Vocal Anatomy and Presence in Performance, have been enjoyed by singers and their teachers. She is passionate about the need for creating co-responsibility for learning to sing by using techniques that educate, inform, and help others see for themselves.

Meribeth is happy to announce a new distance energy healing system for helping singers and teachers. This system uses Integrative Quantum Medicine ™ as its basis. Energy work for performers can take your performance and/or teaching to whole new levels by working with the physical, metaphysical, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic, and spiritual dimensions of your energy field. Working with your energy field is done by telephone. There is no need to be physically present with the healer. It does not replace or interfere with any singing method, teaching, or medical treatment you are currently using.

Web Sites: www.alchemyprogrammes.com & aosinging.com

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Michaela Schausberger

• First singing experience in the CHURCH CHOIR of Ohlsdorf (Upper-Austria)
• Studies:
  • Rhythmics and Singing (Music-University of Vienna)
  • Comparative Music-sciences (University of Vienna)
  • Qualified Trainer in Franklin-Method
• Performing activities:
  • Solo Singer with classical Orchestras, with Brass-Bands and Jazz Formations
  • ZIMMER3: Duo-Formation with Christian Kapun:— Experimental and Improvised Music for Voice, Clarinets and Electronics
  • Member for many years of the “Wiener Kammerchor” and the “Arnold Schönberg Chor”
  • Participation at: Wiener Festwochen, Wiener Klangbogen, Salzburger Festspiele, Musikfestwochen Luzern (Swiss)
  • Cooperations with Kent Nagano, Sandor Vegh, Martin Haselböck, Walter Kobera, Peter Sellars
• Fields of pedagogical activity
  • Voice Teacher (OÖ Landesmusikschulwerk)
  • Member of the teaching stuff at the Institute of Franklin-Method
  • Lectureship at the Music-University of GRAZ and BOZEN (Italy)
  • EUROVOX Congress 2006: Voice and Franklin-Method

Towards the Embodied Voice — Franklin Method

This Workshop focuses on the theory and the practical application of imagery techniques to increase strength, balance and flexibility of your singing voice.

Experience the power of imagery, touch and simple moving exercises to help your physical body being an economical instrumental corpus for the voice.

Become aware of the sentence “Balanced Mobility creates Stability”: To balance muscle action concerened to ribcage and spine, we will work with the natural bone rhythms of our respiratory system. Afterwards we learn details about the flexible movements of the organics, lungs and heart, when we breathe and when we sing. The goal is to build mental awareness and to expand our kinesthetic sense.

Good coordination of the nervous system makes it easier for the singer-voice to come into a very individual, vocal expression.

Inner focus creates outer strength. The voice needs an awareness of the harmonious interplay, a being-moved of the bones, muscles, organs and all the other tissues. With these economical conditions you will find more and more the power and the joy by using your singing voice.

For more Information on the Franklin Method please visit: franklin-methode.ch

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