A Voice Apart

It just happened to me…. I got hit by a Dear! I have to say that it was a very strange experience, to say the list! I have not seen it coming… What I saw, was a deer’s face in my windshield! It came out of the blue, so to speak. It was just after 10 pm and I was driving at a speed of only 56 km! Thank God that I got a speeding ticket 2 days earlier, lol, Otherwise I possibly would be going much faster and thus, the impact of my collision with the deer could have been much more serious. So my car (which I managed to drive home somehow) ended up being damaged for over $11.000!   To my surprise, the body shop, where the car was towed, said that they will take care of everything, mechanics included. Now, 2 weeks later, they called me and told me that they were unable to fix the engine! Go figure! So they had to ship my car to a Volkswagen dealership after all! Now, at least it makes sense! The body shop is the shop meant to fix the body of the car and the dealership is respon...

This Holiday season, we wish you the best of voice and the best of health and prosperity for this upcoming New Year, and always! For the last 42 years, I have worked on a lot of voices; fixing them, restoring them, or just turning amateur speakers and singers into professionals . I have noticed that, o ver the last decade, the attitude of all of those people who were seeking my services ha s vastly changed. Before 2005, people in general were happy-go-lucky, so to speak. They were gladly making commitments to work on their voices (to whichever degree it was needed), gladly kept their appointments and happily paid for our professional services . Needless to say that, in the past, the music scene in Toronto was pretty much thriving and was attracting a lot of wannabe singers. There were a lot of bands formed at H igh Sch ools and even M iddle S chools, let alone Universities. Those guys and girls had a goal in mind; they wanted to become well-known singers/perform...

Last night, we happened to catch a concert which originated in Paris and the venue held, no doubts, over 60,000 people! It was truly packed. To the credit of all those people and the two well-known bands, in spite of the unstable political situation, the concert went on and actually, to my surprise, was very well received.  While watching the concert, I became more and more scared that singing (off key, off tone and off tune) is becoming our standard.  I originally came from Leningrad, (St. Petersburg, Russia), and was deeply enrolled from the age of 6 in all sorts of music. Education in Russia is taken very seriously; so I spent 12 consecutive years, 7 days a week doing music and, specifically, singing.  I, apparently, possessed ‘perfect pitch’ which, I am not sure right now that I still have.  I have been teaching singing since I was 17. That makes it close to 42 years now and 32 years in my own school here in Toronto.  ...