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...

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...

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...

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...

Feel, sing.

While it’s not yet been unequivocally proven, there’s plenty of evidence that humans sang before speech developed. Anthropologists have been assessing the evidence for some time, and there are lots of reasons why this might be so. When we consider the...