Ansley Tillman, Arts and Entertainment Editor
The human voice is one of the most accessible, yet difficult instruments to learn to use. So many questions nip at the heels of new and experienced singers: How do you start singing? How do you keep your voice from cracking mid-song? How can you best convey emotion through your tone and sound?
These questions and more were investigated through a workshop and intensive with Kevin Wilson. Wilson is the Director of Vocal Pedagogy at Oklahoma City University. He holds a masters degree in Music in Vocal Pedagogy from the New England Conservatory and a Bachelor’s degree in Music in Voice from the University of Central Oklahoma. His students have appeared in numerous Broadway musicals, national tours, and a variety of well known venues.
Wilson had a unique way of teaching the students in the intensive. Instead of focusing solely on how their voice sounded, he took a biological approach. In an interview about her experience at the intensive, Riley Watkins said “A lot of it focused on the anatomy of singing which was cool to hear somebody talk about. [he had] a really scientific perspective… So what we talked about is how, on the path from your voice into the world, slight changes in that path change[s] the entire sound. I can be singing one way and then lift my tongue and I focus my energy in my mouth and my nose then it comes out completely different.”
Watkins is an extremely talented singer who has hearing loss. She describes her experience with singing being more bodily than based on what she hears herself sing. “I lost my hearing when I was 16, so I’ve been singing for longer. At that point, I had already really developed that feeling of knowing exactly where my energy is and what sound it’s gonna create. And so that’s what I rely on more now and that’s what I’ve had to tell my voice teachers.” One of the beneficial things Watkins describes about Wilson’s teaching methods was that it translated better to the way she sings, because he told them how singing should feel in your body, not just how it sounds.
Wilson’s experience and method seems to really have had an impact on the way those who participated in the intensive sang.
Watkins described him as kind and ambitious, with a passion to really help people sing their best. “He knows a lot about the exact technicalities of something that to a lot of people feel so mystical and hard to understand.” Extremely committed to his practice, he had an entire chart for different places in the body from which you could sing from and how that affects one’s voice. He made it accessible for singers of any experience level, working with them to sing the best they can.