• Photos
  • Bio
  • Contact Ian

Ian Sidden

Subscribe

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Craft
  • My News
  • About the Music
  • The Rest of Life

Traveling Straws

January 3, 2012 By Ian Sidden

Here are some of the straws I used on my recent road-trip to keep myself from being kicked out of hotels practicing on the road. They also have the effect of training the light mechanism in a safe and not-too-noisy way.

My plan is to incorporate much more straw practice into my teaching and practicing this year.

Filed Under: Craft Tagged With: Light mechanism, Straws, Travel

Looking Forward

December 31, 2011 By Ian Sidden

I’m sitting in a hotel in the San Fernando Valley because while Rebekah and I were driving back to New Mexico from Oregon, my clutch decided that it was a good time to pass away.

Oh well. There were a million other places on this drive that would have been much worse than Los Angeles county for the clutch so fail, so I have very deep gratitude for my truck’s timing. The folks who’ve helped me including the tow truck operator and the shop owner have also been great.

I figure that I can use this time to keep doing research. I’m rereading Ingo Titze’s Principles of Voice Production and reading Cooksey’s Working with Adolescent Voices. I’m researching male adolescent voice change in preparation for a workshop I’ll be giving next weekend for the All State Festival in New Mexico. It’s fascinating and really useful material.

I’m also becoming more and more interested in the use of small straws for training a lighter voice production. Over the winter break, I began singing through a small stirring straw as my primary warmup, and the results are tremendous. Titze’s written and spoken about this numerous times, but the idea is simple; by phonating through a straw, you impede the airflow leaving your vocal tract. This creates an environment within the vocal tract that makes it easier to phonate throughout the entire pitch range. Big drinking straws are fine, but the little stirring ones are just great. The itty bitty stirring ones with two conjoined chambers might be too small, but I’ll keep working on it.

And of course…Die Fledermaus is approaching at NMSU, and that will be an awesome amount of work and joy.

I hope you have a very happy and creative New Year.

 

Filed Under: My News Tagged With: Adolescent Voices, Ingo Titze, John Cooksey, new year, Travel

In Bayreuth

July 28, 2011 By Ian Sidden

Currently I’m in Bayreuth, Germany visiting friends Andrew Zimmerman and Susan Maclean. I’ve seen several performances so far (dress rehearsals, which are basically full performances without curtain calls). That the weather has been temperate and not the perpetually rainy stuff of legends has been the cherry on top of an already terrific trip.

Tonight is the premiere of Parsifal with Susan as Kundry. To say I’m excited is an understatement.

Pictures!

20110727-025920.jpg

The Festspielhaus from a distance

20110727-025944.jpg

Bust of Wagner in the gardens

20110727-030003.jpg

View of Wagner's grave and Wagner museum during the grave ceremony on Monday marking the beginning of the festival

Filed Under: My News, The Rest of Life Tagged With: Andrew Zimmerman, Bayreuth, Susan Maclean, Travel, Wagner

About Ian

Ian Sidden is currently a baritone member of the Theater Dortmund Opera chorus. Read More…

Latest Posts

Premiere: La muette de Portici

Tonight at Theater Dortmund, we’re having our premiere of Auber’s La muette de Portici. However, it will be a closed performance.

The Stress Feedback Loop

Anything can turn into a habit if we practice it enough, and we walk around with habitual physical stress making us feel and sound stressed.

“Im weißen Rössl” Morning After

Last night, we had the premiere of “Im weißen Rössl” at Theater Dortmund. I don’t think I’ve ever heard our audience laugh as hard or as consistently as they did last night. The creative combination of the cast and Regie team has really made magic here. For my part, I enjoy singing the tunes, and […]

Solving Problems

One lens to view your task as a performer is as a problem solver.

Premiere: Madama Butterfly

Tonight is our premiere of Madama Butterfly in Opernhaus Dortmund. I’m playing Cio-Cio-San’s Uncle Yakusidé, and I’m very excited to be a part of this production.

Copyright © 2021 · WordPress