Sunday October 8th, 2023

Cecil Sharp House, London NW1

I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of the work of the BVA for more than 30 years. I have had a couple of years off and had spent time exploring ideas; I had not attended many conferences as I felt I had to live with what I had absorbed, and concentrate on putting it into practice.

I was intrigued by the title of this conference so decided – thankfully – to attend. I use the word ‘thankfully’ deliberately, because it brought me back to the fascination of exploring voice with such good, well-informed presenters.

Both Aphrodite Iacovidou (ENT) and Abi Simpson (SLT) gave insightful information both of vocal function, and on the possibilities of how vocalists could be helped. I felt they had a very real understanding of voices – both singing and speaking – and felt enormously encouraged by how this exploration was continuing. They used stroboscopy and fibrescope in real time, which I found so very useful.

We had another insightful presentation, this time by Kaya Herstad-Carney. I genuinely have not heard such a clear speaker exploring different voice functions with real understanding, vocally illustrated really well by herself with wit and clarity.

Next to fascinate and completely blow our minds was Bellatrix, a beatbox champion. It was absolutely extraordinary how she used her voice. This was followed by a presentation/workshop from Nicole Gill, where she shared her exploration of distortion effects, and had the whole room making these dramatic vocalisations with her. We were all experimenting without fear – no pain!

There was a further session with Aphrodite and Abi, where Bella and Kaya were both examined with flexible endoscope whilst they voiced, making many different sounds. Again, this was really informative, presenting not opinion but visual fact!

The last presentation was from Oren Boder, explaining his model of ‘Evita’, an AI tool for singers. This is such a new concept for me personally to absorb, but was a necessary session. Oren was reassuring that we need input from humans; I still need to learn more from him

I felt emphatically that the detailed and informative information I received from this day was exactly what the BVA stands for.

 

Reviewed by Mary Hammond LRAM, FRAM is a Singing Teacher and Vocal Coach based in London