Being a musician is usually seen as a fun and creative job, but what does it take to teach?
Mrs Annabel Mountford is one of many who has found a job by turning her passion into profit as a singing teacher She initially started singing when she was young and took lessons from around the age of eight or nine. “From the age of about 12,” she says, “I have always wanted to be a singer. At school it quickly became my identity as I was always singing and took every opportunity to perform in productions, choirs, lunchtime concerts, any singing opportunity going.” She continued.
She went on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music on their vocal studies undergraduate course and from there to London at the Royal College of Music on their postgraduate vocal studies course, and later, their opera course; she went on to work at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, English Touring Opera, Garsington Opera and many others.
“Over time my love of singing shifted from performing to teaching. I had always taught alongside my performing and I started to realise I enjoyed teaching more than many aspects of being a performer.” Mrs Mountford recalls, “I realised that any time I listened to a colleague sing, I was tuning into how they were producing their sound, becoming more and more fascinated, I undertook courses in voice pedagogy and have my own studio at home.”
“I love my job. I love exploring how much a sound can change with just a few technical changes. The hard bit is learning how to consistently sing well.”
“We are taught that if we work really hard, we will do well and be rewarded; however with singing, if you try really hard, effort is really unhelpful and makes it much harder to sing. We want to sing efficiently so we can emote, move our audience, and tell our story. As a teacher, you need to find many ways to explain what you want the singer to do, and as singing is produced on the inside of your body, of which you can’t see, we talk a lot about how we feel when we sing.”
People often say that anyone can sing if they put their mind to it, but is that really true? Mrs Annabel Mountford’s response was, “Anyone can learn to sing, yes. If you look at opera as a genre it caters for such a variety of voice types, from the richest bass to the coloratura soprano, there is a place for everyone. It is a skill, it will take time and practice but you will improve and soon hear changes in the quality and volume of your sound.”
She carried on, “I see many people, mainly older people in my private teaching practice, who were told as children ‘be quiet, you can’t sing’ and so for the rest of their life they do not sing. This is so sad. They come to see me for a lesson, and it turns out they can sing but they need to know what songs to sing at the correct pitch for them and learn how to use their voice.”
