PAN-EUROPEAN VOICE CONFERENCE
WHAT'S NEW IN VOICE RESEARCH?
In 2011, I took a trip to Marsaille, FRANCE, to attend a conference. As a college professor, one of my main jobs is to stay abreast of all that is happening in my field. This was a great way to combine my research with a trip to France! The Pan-European Voice Conference or PEVOC had only been done eight times before, this was the ninth conference so it was called PEVOC9. My trip to Marseille for the PEVOC9 conference was nothing less than inspirational. This was a conference like none I’d ever experienced. Voice professionals from many different fields came together to share what they know from their extremely different perspectives. All conference attendees shared the same love and passion for the voice. The bookstore sold little stuffed larynxes along side books on performance, speech therapy, vocal pedagogy, voice research, and on and on. This conference was for any professional who had anything to do with the voice: teachers, doctors, microphone and speaker designers, singers, actors, speakers, etc.
There were five keynote lectures that attempted to be relevant to everyone followed by break out sessions for folks from each respective field to get into more depth. The sessions I attended were all about the singing voice. These were attended by professional commercial singers (called CCM singers) and professional classical singers (called western lyric singers) along with speech teachers, professional actors, voice teachers, vocal pedagogues and some researchers in psychology, acoustics, cognitive neuroscience, audience responses, language influences and effects of emotions on the voice. Such varied and interesting topics kept me interested the entire time. In fact, there were many sessions that I wanted to attend that were concurrently given. I came away with a huge (heavy) book of abstracts and a nifty diagram of the vocal mechanism. I also came away with lots of new perspectives on how science and practice interact and many new colleagues have also entered my professional life. Very enriching!
The LMRVT or Resonant Voice research was presented again at a joint session and is still just as mind blowing now as it was when I first learned about it from Dr. Verdolini-Abbott in May of 2009. Now Katherine Verdolini-Abbott has a book you can buy on the topic: https://www.pluralpublishing.com/publications/lessac-madsen-resonant-voice-therapy-clinician-manual
AIRS was something I had found on line before I heard the mini-presentation from one of its researchers. It is a worthy pursuit that I intend to support. AIRS is still in business and doing amazing work. Here’s the link: https://www.airsplace.ca/
The personality traits of excellent singers made me laugh out loud. Optimistic/Rhapsodic OR Self-Reliant beyond normal levels. Sometimes science simply confirms what we already know. Haha
Sing and See. Voce Vista. Other software I want to explore. – I never got into any of the technological tools for teaching singing as I still rely mostly on my own ears and experience. I always felt adding the technology was adding an obstacle between me and my students. There are lots of teachers who feel differently.
Try Sing and See here: https://www.singandsee.com/
Try Voce Vista here: https://www.vocevista.com/
PEVOC 14 will be in 2022 in Tallinn, ESTONIA (Covid allowing!). Here is the link to explore: https://www.pevoc2021.ee/
Let’s go!
