Starting Point:

Élodie is an experienced Equity performer with a versatile, well-trained voice. She wanted to work the main songs from Light in the Piazza for an upcoming Clara audition. Her singing was very skilled, including her head voice, so the main question was 'how nuanced could her singing get with these songs?'

We looked carefully for anything that could be ‘even better’ with her Clara repertoire. Ultimately, there were just a few specific high notes where the vowel and pitch combination made these notes trickier to sing with a tone and volume that was even with the rest of the phrase. We wanted to find a way to make these few notes sit more evenly, in context.

Process:

We used exercises, songwork, and a bit of subtle vowel adjustment to iron out the tone and volume, until the the few trickier pitch/vowel notes were easy to sing flexibly and evenly, in line with their surrounding phrases.

Results:

It only took Élodie a couple sessions to accomplish the whole process of ‘dialing in the technique’ for the Light in the Piazza songs including checking in to ensure the adjustments had worked as intended.

This is a good example of where just one or two coachings is enough: The song is already in great technical shape, and the goal is just to look for areas to add even more polish, so all the audition panel sees is the transparent expression of story and character, combined with beautiful, nuanced singing.