Breakout Session

Training the Whole Voice: In Pursuit of a New Paradigm

Saturday, June 23 • 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Presenter: Tanya Kruse Ruck
Introduced by: Kathleen Otterson
Location: Cohiba 1-4

The marketplace for singers is changing rapidly and the voice pedagogy world needs to respond quickly to educate students who will be competitive in this environment. Rather than teaching with the philosophy that “classical technique gives students a foundation that will allow them to sing everything”, what about teaching function and guiding an exploration of the whole voice and then allowing students to apply it to a variety of genres? How can pedagogues set a paradigm shift in motion within existing curricula? How can we put the power of choice, regarding their vocal training, back into the hands of our students? This session will answer those questions and aid teachers in discovering what they value in training versatile singers. Participants will begin to learn how to create a spectrum of sounds and will also hear them demonstrated by young professionals.

About Tanya Kruse Ruck

Tanya Kruse Ruck associate professor of voice at UW-Milwaukee (UWM). Tanya teaches voice to students in the undergraduate and graduate programs at UWM who are interested in developing their whole voice, singing opera, art song, pop, music theatre, country, and more. She teaches the pedagogy series at UWM using a fact-based, functional method, addressing how the voice and body work in many styles of singing. Although she was trained to sing classical music, she has sought out additional instruction to honor her interest in the contemporary commercial music that she grew up listening to and is a graduate of the CCM Voice Pedagogy Institute. Her students recently have been seen on the Metropolitan Opera stage, as a prize winner in the Lotte Lenya Competition, in innovative renderings of traditional opera, and in professional, contemporary music theater. Tanya also enjoys training large/dramatic voices. www.tanyakruse.net