Studio
In person only, no video lessons
| What | When | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Each week | ||
| Private lessons | Tuesday to Friday15:00-21:00 | Adults, and teenagers from thirteen. |
| Private lessons | Saturday10:00-14:00 | The first slots to go each term. |
| Choir intensive | A Saturday, by arrangement10:00-16:00 | At your venue, booked four weeks ahead, with a lunch break. |
| Choir evenings | Monday and Wednesday2 h, at your rehearsal | Booked four weeks ahead, or six for a season. |
| Sunday | Every weekClosed | No lessons, no visits. |
| Through the year | ||
| Autumn term | Mid August to mid December | Often a short waiting list until October. |
| Spring term | Early January to end of June | Ends with the informal studio evening in June. |
| Summer | First three weeks of JulyClosed | No lessons or choir visits. |
| Winter | 22 December to 2 JanuaryClosed | Spring term starts straight after. |
Kvoalto · since 2020
In Bergen since 2020
It began in the spring of 2020 with a borrowed piano, and grew one recommendation at a time.
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Spring 2020 4students
Four students, a borrowed upright
A borrowed room, after fifteen years singing alto in chamber choirs. Lessons were fitted around whoever else needed the room.
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The room 2021 442Hz, the A
A studio and a piano of my own
The piano is tuned twice a year, the week after the clocks change, and always to A at 442 rather than 440, because that is where the choirs I coach tend to settle by the second hour.
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Choirs 2022
The first choir season
Six evening visits with a small choir that wanted an outside ear, and a great deal learned about how much can be heard from the back row.
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Growth 2023 30students
Three choirs and thirty students
Three small choirs each season, fitted around about thirty private students on weekday afternoons and Saturdays.
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Limits 2024 40voices per choir
Limits, set on purpose
Forty voices per choir and thirty students per week. Beyond that I stop hearing individual people, and individual people are the whole job.
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Every year June
The studio evening in June
Once a year, at the end of the spring term, students sing for each other in the studio. Nobody has to. Most do, and the tea runs out by eight.
A note
From the middle of the chord
For fifteen years I sang alto in chamber choirs, which means fifteen years in the middle of the chord, listening in both directions at once.
Altos rarely get the tune. We learn to hear where everyone else is and find our note against them. That habit of listening outward, rather than pushing, is most of what I teach, to a teenager before a school concert and to a forty voice choir alike.
It is also why everyone who comes to the studio does the same warm up, every lesson. It is not clever and it is not meant to be. Because it never changes, it works like a ruler: the day it feels easy, you can hear that something has moved, and so can I.
Solveig
In the room
Small, warm and plain on purpose.
- PianoAn upright, the one bought in 2021.
- MirrorA long one, for watching shoulders and breath rather than faces.
- StandA music stand at two heights, one for sitting and one for standing.
- KettleWater, and a kettle for anyone who arrives cold off the bus.
- FloorRoom to stand and walk, because some phrases only settle when you move.
- MobileStudents record on their own mobiles, so the recordings stay with them.