Wanting to change but resisting change!

Attempting to cause a voice student to adopt a new singing technique is not an easy chore.  Students – beginners to the most experienced and seasoned professionals –  came to John Lester because they wanted to improve their voices. That was a good thing. They must have realized that they could improve or they wouldn't have made arrangements to study with Lester – a master teacher.

So they arrived in the studio for the first time motivated to refine their singing. To refine they must change how they sing. To change how they sing, they first must be made to realize what it is that needs to be changed.

Singers, however, often attended their first lessons well armed with egos aimed at protecting their vocal colors, self perceptions of their voices and talents. Although they wanted to change, they often believed that they were already excellent at what they were doing. In a way, they came to the voice studio wanting to change but resisting change.

Lester had a very gentle way of persuading students to recognize the difference between what they were doing as singers and what they must do if they were to release their true vocal potential. He often accomplished this by contrasting their current sounds with "new" sounds they had learned to produce in his studio. He encouraged them to think of sounds that required an open throat. A "new" sound was the result. This new sound was sometimes surprising to the student and even revelatory.

Lester was always thoughtful in his use of language in the voice studio. He would never say that one sound produced by a student was better than other sounds or that one sound was worse than others. Rather Lester asked the student to make the observations. "Do you hear the difference between those two sounds?  Sing the way you normally sing. Now sing the new sound. Can you describe the difference between those tones?"

Lester agreed with the student's observations that the sounds are different from one another. Lester would not say that one sound was better than the other – only that they were different. Then, he proceeded by asking the student to make even more of a contrast by singing extremely dark tones – overly dark. Then he asked them to create exaggeratedly bright tones – with a cutting edge to them.  He then would ask the student to produce a slightly less exaggerated dark tone while reinforcing the idea that the singing tone singers preconceive causes the vocal instrument to assume the position necessary to produce the sound they wish to sing. We sound the way we do because that is the sound we are expecting. Change our expectation and our technique adjusts to meet the expectation. WE are in control of our vocal color and thus our vocal technique.

He referred to this pedagogical technique as the "concept of opposites" which involved going to the very ends of the spectrum of nearly every aspect of excellent singing technique.

To improve, change.

What did a master voice teacher like John Lester say or do with voice students who came through the studio door wanting to improve their singing?  John Lester had a peculiar ability to identify remedies to technical singing problems no matter what they were. Very basically, however, he would simply inform students that, if they were going to improve, they had to change what they were doing. It seems so basic, but without that starting point, little improvement was possible.

Lester reminds and enlightens!

What did John Lester know and teach about the voice that provided so many of his students with the opportunity to enjoy long careers on the international opera stage? What did they learn from him that allowed them the opportunity to stand on the stage with the world's best singers? Those secrets are shared in the upcoming book: John Lester: Great Secrets for Singing by Gary Funk and Robert Hoyem.

The book is a testimonial to a most remarkable teacher who, as he approached the end of his life, wanted to share his philosophy in book form so that others may pass on what Lester learned from European master voice teachers such as Jean de Reszke, Mario Sammarco, Michael Raucheisen and others. Lester reminds and enlightens singers and voice teachers about the very basic principles that must govern healthy, beautiful singing.

 

Part II: Great Secrets for Singing

Following the Lester Lexicon that opens "Great Secrets for Singing,"  the second half of the book shares John L. Lester's remarkable biography.  From his earliest years in Ohio through a covered wagon journey to Texas and then New Mexico, Lester is identified by his voice teacher in Texas as a young man with great potential as a singer. After studying in NYC Oscar Seagle and Jean de Reszke, he travels to Italy and continues his development as a soloist with renown singer and pegagogue, Jean de Reszke in Nice, France. Lester moves to NYC and teaches voice to students ranging from actors at Paramount Studios to NBC radio personalities to Alice Marble, one of the great female tennis stars of all time. He finally takes his young family to Montana where he establishes the University of Montana as a place to go to study voice.

The authors, Robert Hoyem and Gary Funk, studied with Lester during their respective student years at The University of Montana.

NEW BOOK! Great Secrets for Singing: The Life and Pedagogy of Voice Teacher John Lester

John Lester

Dr. Robert Hoyem  and Dr. Gary Funk are nearing completion of a book about their beloved voice teacher, John L. Lester.

Great Secrets for Singing: the life and pedagogy of John L. Lester will be published as an e-book.
 
This book will serve as a valuable resource about Professor Lester's constructively direct manner of helping voice students discover the true potential of their voices as expressive, dramatic and musical instruments.  The pedagogical lexicon that forms the first half of the book will be very useful to voice teachers and singers alike. It records and clarifies Lester's physical and conceptual approach to training successful professional and amateur singers.  The pedagogy revealed in this book will lead teachers and voice students to decisive improvement of their singing voices and to more satisfying and successful careers as voice teachers and singers.

For Professor Lester, teaching voice was a "sacred" responsibility of great ethical importance. His work with students was not only about teaching singing. He was also deeply concerned with enabling sensitive, disciplined and positively effective lives in the arts. A large number of his students became fully accomplished singers who went on to successful international careers in opera, concert, musical theater and music education.

From 1939-1970, Professor Lester was head of the voice department in the School of Music at The University of Montana in Missoula, Montana.