Cool Opera-tor
On Friday the 3rd of December, our year 10 music students worked with a professional opera singer to develop their singing technique and performance. Sian Millett, is a young professional singer based in Manchester who has worked with both local choral societies and professional opera companies since graduating from the Royal Northern College of Music last year.
During her time with our GCSE students she work with the whole class, developing their breathing, posture and singing technique. She introduced the students to concepts such as Italian Vowels and diaphragm support. These were new ideas to many of our students and will improve their class singing in our new year 10 singing group, Vox Humana.
Later on in the afternoon, Sian worked with our solo singers who are preparing for the GCSE performance exam. All the students performed in front of an audience and Sian worked individually with all the students on areas of their performance that needed working on. Many of our students were surprised at how much of a difference Sian’s quite simple suggestions made to their overall sound. Also, one big area that was worked on was communication with the audience, something that many young singers struggle with. However, it was clear that when explained and demonstrated by a professional like Sian, what an important part of performance it is and our students realized this also.
The music department would like to thank Sian for coming to work with our students, many of them will benefit from her work in their performance exam, we hope to invite Sian back later in the year to work with a larger number of our students from different years. Also, well done to all the students who performed, listened and responded to advice so well.
