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...

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...

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...

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...