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Vocal Music
It's all about singing...
Excerpts from an article in the Yankee Press September-October 2007.
We asked soprano Lisa Saffer how she makes that sound?
"Singers work from inner sensation. That's the only way you can. Your whole body is your instrument -- like a basketball player's or a dancer's -- but with the added ingredient of art. We're distinct among musicians because the art is part of our bodies and we can't hear ourselves accurately. We're hearing something inside our bodies going out, so we do hear, but it's different -- like holding your ears while you talk.
“I keep my breathing as relaxed and open as possible and my carriage aligned, much as in bodywork or yoga. My ribs expand, so the air gently fills a vacuum. As I breathe, I drop my jaw a little, and the back of my throat feels horizontal, almost like a yawn or a smile, letting the air come into it rather than dragging the air into it.
"When I release the breath into a vowel, I have the feeling that the vowel is riding on the breath, which is elastic and free and in constant motion. There's a feeling of space in the back of my throat, in the palate, and in the sinuses. But the sound feels focused on a point a few feet in front of me, with the resonance very far forward to carry it farther.
"Over and over my teacher would say, 'Don't think, just sing it.' To get to a point where I could relax and allow a performance to just happen -- to go forward on its own propulsion without micromanaging it -- was an amazing feeling.
"In the end, singing is really all about the expression. The technical apparatus is only a system to produce sounds to express something else -- really the mysteries of art."
Lisa Saffer is a 47-year-old diva. She received her master's degree from Boston's New England Conservatory of Music in 1984, In the great opera houses and concert halls of the world, she sings in many languages, her small frame launching glorious sounds that reach to the farthest balconies.
