A User's Manual for the Aging Voice

Details: 168 pages, paperback, 7"x10"

ISBN13: 978-1-909082-61-8

Release Date: September 2019

As the population ages, so too does the need to adjust and amend teaching and clinical practice among voice professionals.

Martha Howe has compiled a masterclass of a book in which in which some of the world’s leading teachers and clinicians share their own experiences and what they do in the studio or clinic when working with clients in their fifth decade and beyond. Chapters are designed to be wholly practical and full of hints, tips and exercises. There are also included chapters of transition stories with famous and not so famous singers. 

The result is a handbook that singers, teachers, clinicians, and all voice professionals can use for practical information both for themselves and for their studios. It will also be invaluable in pedagogy classes. 

About the Author

After an extensive performance path beginning with folk and church music, passing through the baroque, concert work and over fifty recitals, landing squarely in Wagner, Strauss and 20th–21st century opera, with over a hundred roles on major stages, Martha Howe began teaching voice and acting while singing in a Musicals school in Vienna, before returning to the U.S. in 2007. She moved back to Vienna at the end of 2018. Her stylistically wide-ranging studio includes Skype students in Europe and the U.S., and she coaches business people on their presentation skills.

Attending her first Symposium in 2011 was a revelatory experience. She found it fascinating to discover the science behind the vocal traditions. Vocally and technically, things were coming full circle.

In 1907, Maude Douglas Tweedy stopped her concert career and began to work with Dr. Frank E. Miller, the leading laryngologist in New York City. By 1912, she had her regular studio of professional singers and was also what would be known today as Dr. Miller’s Singing Health Specialist, working with his patients to clear vocal injuries while retraining them to prevent future injuries. Mme. Tweedy died in 1985, at the age of 98, after 70 years of teaching. Martha was one of Tweedy’s last students. She then worked with master teacher Jane Randolph (presently at the San Francisco Conservatory) who inherited and refined Mme. Tweedy’s technique.