SINGING & SELF
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The Queen in Them
Teiya Kasahara in Tapestry Opera's Songbook XII (photo: Eric Forget, 2023) This week we were paid a visit by a serious Opera Kween, Teiya Kasahara (they/he), creator and star of their one-human show, "The Queen in Me". Teiya talked about their journey as a transgender...
Trust the impulse
Impulse (sourced on Snappa.com, March 2025) Idea. Breath. Sound. Hesitation is deadly. We sing at our best when the channel is free. Allowing ourselves to trust that what we've been working on will serve us in the moment is one of the greatest challenges we face. It's...
Full Circle, Part 2
Full Circle Pt. 2 (sourced on Snappa.com, February 2025) You'll need to get used to this theme of Full Circle. As I move toward my final year of teaching at Laurier (yes, I turned 65. It's a thing), I find myself reflecting more and more on my teaching life, the...
Full Circle
Big Red Ball (Kimberly Barber, taken December 2024, Vancouver, BC) This week I had the pleasure of coming full circle. I had a "debriefing" with one of my former students, Dr. Elizabeth Lepock, with whom I co-taught the new course "Pedagogy and Integrated Wellness"...
Just a member of the band
Girl Band (sourced on Snappa.com, January 2025) This week I made the decision to sneak back out of performing retirement. I'm joining a band. True story! Not just any band, mind you. And it's not the kind of band you might typically think of; it's a wind band. And in...
Betweenness
Betweenness (Kimberly Barber, December 2024) Betweenness has been a persistent theme in my teaching in the past week as we returned to classes. We've reflected frequently on the quality of the "space between" the phases of the breath: the moment where we are simply...
Becoming and Overcoming
Photo uploaded from Snappa.com December 2024 It's the reflective time of year, where the days get shorter, we cuddle up with a hot cup of cocoa and we settle in to think about the year that's passed (or almost passed). For me as a solstice baby, it's a particularly...
Hard Things: revisited
Butterfly among the rocks (Kimberly Barber, Kathleen Lake, Yukon, July 2024) I've talked about Hard Things in this space before, and this is the time of year (about 3/4 of the way through the term) when such themes frequently re-surface. Students are preparing for...
Communication matters
Communication matters (sourced on Snappa.com, November 2024) As it turns out, communication matters. A lot. When you work in collaborative settings, toggling between duties, negotiating with other leaders, what you say must be clearly communicated, and often. Our...
Feels like crossing over
Lion King Rehearsal with Vox and Opera Laurier students (K. Barber, October 2024) We've always had students at Laurier who loved music theatre first. This love was, once upon a time, tolerated (barely), but never nurtured. The times, as they say, are a'changin'. This...
Identity Politics
Identity (sourced at Snappa.com, October 24, 2024) It's been a while, friends. In fact, it's been 5 months. Not that I've not had things to say, just not enough bandwidth to commit them to the blogosphere. In fact, today's topic is something that's been ruminating for...
Shame spirals, part 2
"shame on you" (sourced on Snappa.com, May 24, 2024) Since I started on this topic last week, I've had more time to reflect on these shame narratives in my singing life. One of the most persistent shame stories is that my voice was not "big enough". In case those who...
The price of shame
The price of shame (self-portrait, Kimberly Barber, May 16, 2024) Shame is something that comes up regularly in voice work, particularly with folks who identify as "non-singers". It's pretty much a guarantee in the workshops I give, that someone or other will confess...
Feel, sing.
What appears to be true is that the spontaneous NEED to communicate originates before cognitive thought. So before our analytical mind is even aware of the impulse, our intuitive side wishes to break into song! (basically…)
