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So I came from a singing family.
My mom has an incredible classical soprano voice.
She used to sound like Julie Andrews.
That kind of beautiful, high, “floating” sound.
There are some genetics, definitely.
I have a daughter that has that same kind of voice.
But there definitely is genetics going on there.
When I was in 9th grade I started trying to sing
and belt up high.
How old is 9th grade?
Um, 15?
15, yeah something like that.
I started trying to belt up higher.
And my mom, who had been working with me up to that point,
said I don’t know what to do with you anymore
I’m going to put you in lessons.
And my older sisters were at Baylor University at the time.
And they were able to get me a lesson with a professor at Baylor.
And I went in and he said, I really can only do this one time,
you really need to find someone at home, I have a full schedule.
And so we started doing some vocalizing.
And he stopped at the piano and I was like oh man, we’re done.
And he said, wait just a second.
Back up against the wall.
And I was like, I need a parent!
No.
He said back up against the wall, and this is so weird he said
put your thumbs on chin and wrap it around your neck,
and he said keep your body straight up against the wall.
And he said, now do this scale.
And out popped a mixed high C.
And he went phew! Wow.
That is there. That is in you.
And I was like oh man that is so awesome.
That’s so great, you know, stretching my neck to hit
an A flat and all of a sudden I had this high C.
And I was so excited, got in the car,
and on the two hour trip home I had forgotten how to do it.
You know, I was just like I can’t figure this out!
It was like math, it was really very technical.
And so I took lessons from him for a while.
He said come back in a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
And he was instrumental for me in learning how to
get through the door to that mixed high register.
It’s interesting, that approach for me,
when I graduated from college,
everything was like this.
♪ AH ♪
You know, that whole thing.
Everything was just like that.
And while I loved the room filling experience of that,
it didn’t leave room for what we’re doing right now,
something very conversational.
And so that’s where I had to learn how to
get in and out of that very quickly.
How far can I push the other stuff,
and when do I need to go back to that.
I’ve had a lot of folks who sing classically
or teach classically, and they have a bit of a fear
that if their students sing some of the contemporary music
they’ll lose their classical voice.
Have you felt that it has impacted your classical singing
to have more of a crossover approach?
Well, I’m just going to be honest with you
I am not a classical singer.
I would not put myself on the same plain.
The guys that do that, they work tirelessly
to try to get to a place of perfection.
My sister plays trumpet professionally in Chicago.
She’s played with the symphony,
and she also comes and tours with me.
When tours with me and then goes back,
she has to change gears even for what she does
because it is a different technique,
it’s a different mindset of the different things.
So I would not ever be so bold as to put myself on the same
plain as those guys.
The reason that I have incorporated classical music
into what I do,
(outside of the technique that I learned)
is because I have always had a desire to bring that to people
who can’t get past the lack of conversational tone.
And so I just thought I’m going to record Nessun Dorma,
because there’s a whole word of people who
don’t know this incredible work
that changed the course of music.
And that was my goal when I started singing that song.
So my goal isn’t to sound like a classical singer
when I sing that stuff.
It never has been.
I just wanted to do the song justice.
And make people go,
“oh my gosh where did that come from?”
“What an amazing piece of art that that is.”
So yeah, forgot the question you asked me!
Oh that’s fine!
We could even call it a more legit voice versus pop voice.
When you go to your pop voice,
your legit voice, does it improve
from having done the pop sounds?
Or does it make it more difficult?
I will say my legit voice is a tension release.
It really is a tension release.
There is innate tension in contemporary music.
It’s a part of the style.
But legit is all about singing in that stylistically
and singing with the perfection of technique.
So anytime, even like what we just did a second ago
with God Bless America,
you have this belting that has this tension in it
and then all of a sudden it releases
and it’s this ahhh kind of moment.
Well that’s what that is.
Now as far as whether it has made it more difficult or easier,
once again I would say probably if I had stayed in
classical music my whole life I would be able to
do that a lot better and a lot cleaner.
But that has not been my goal.
Very good.
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