Interview with performer and educator Lori Fredrics -Summer 2008
Published on 6/7/2008
By Arthur Rechts
AR-It has been over a year since you left your position as a lecturer at Kingston University, have you been continuing to teach as well as perform?
LF- Absolutely, I teach and coach an average of about twenty mostly professional and aspiring professional singers per week.
AR-Anybody famous?
LF-Not at the moment but when I have had celebrity clients I have never named them. I think it is important to keep a bit of that mystique going, the public should see the end result and not necessarily see all the inner workings.
AR –You are one of the most versatile performers around, performing in the classical, avant garde, jazz, musical theater, rock and commercial fields. Why have you chosen to be a generalist rather than specialize?
LF- Well, I am interested in a wide variety of musical genres. I actually started out in the late seventies as a singer songwriter and performer in the New York City, Greenwich Village scene. I was very young, I started performing professionally when I was only thirteen years old and I did not present myself as a child, I put on a lot of makeup and pretended to know what was going on. I would grab my Les Paul guitar get on the bus and showcase my tunes in clubs. I started collaborating with other musicians and playing in bands. Then I stated being asked to sing backing vocals on lots of different projects. I soon discovered that I needed serious skills in order to do what I wanted to do at the time, which was to become a top session singer. My desire to become a serious musician lead to my going to university and studying opera performance. Opera as I saw it was ultimate achievement of a singer. I then started to win competitions one of which included a performance at Carnegie Hall, I was only nineteen. Around that time I had a serious car accident which made it very difficult to play guitar. Playing aggravated the injury so I concentrated on my classical singing.
AR-If you could choose on style that you feel most comfortable what would that be?
LF- I guess that would have to be contemporary concert music and opera roles in my own native accent and language. You can’t be more authentic than singing the music of your own time in your own language. That being said I have performed in Italian(standard and dialects), German(standard and dialects) ,French ,Spanish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Swedish, Russian, Latin. I am presently working on Rusalka’s aria in Czech and several jazz songs in Brazilian Portugese. Of course I am coaching with native speakers to get it as perfect as possible considering my late start in these languages.
AR–Do you think it is possible for other singers such as your students to be as versatile as you?
LF- Absolutely and I encourage exploration as long as it includes healthy singing techniques, the voice has to come first because without an instrument you can do anything.
AR-Are there any dangers for singers in singing various different styles of music.
LF- It is the particular repertoire and technique used rather than the general genre. For example it would be much less damaging for a developing classical singer to sing a jazz standard like “My funny valentine” or a pop song like killing me softly than to attempt a heavy Verdi aria or some Wagner. The problem is when lyric voices attempt dramatic literature in classical music or open chest belting in Musical Theatre or Rock.
AR-So belting is bad?
LF- No, belting is fine for voices who do it naturally but not for most voices. I make it a practice to almost never ask female singing students who do not naturally take their open chest voices above the prima passaggio, to do so. In laymans terms that is not to take singing in the speech mechanism above about the first E flat above middle C.
AR-You said almost never when might you do so?
LF-There have been several occasion in the last twenty years when I was working with a young singer or a post menopausal singer with no useable head voice at all. If after many attempts it seems that there is no normal singing voice , I create one entirely from the speaking voice. As there is no existing singing voice, I am not risking hurting anything with this approach.
AR-There are now many singing teachers around who teach singers to belt, what do you think of them.
LF-I wish their students luck, but I would not recommend going to such a teacher. A few years ago I was associated with a singing teacher who claimed that she could teach anyone to belt. I had my doubts but kept an open mind, because it would certainly be nice to be able to help more singers sing in open chest throughout their range safely as the industry seems to put a premium on belting. Last year, however, I heard a performance by this singer teacher and unfortunately her voice was in shreds, it was a real shame. She was shifting gears between the two registers and cracking loudly. It was a total embarrassment in my opinion. Perhaps there were other factors such as changes her endocrine system, but certainly her performance did not prove her point that anyone can safely belt. When I compare last years performance to a previous one around four years ago when the same singing teacher participated in a duo recital I honestly felt there was massive vocal degeneration.
AR-There are rumours going around that you are behind some political performance art, is this true.
LF-All art is political and yes I have always done performance art and will continue to do so. I think art is a great way to get a message across. I am proud to say that I participated in a small way, by writing a song for the charity ACTIONAID’s economic and social development team to communicate their message in a positive way to Douglas Alexander of The Department for international Development on Valentine’s day. The charity seems to have made an impact on policy including stepping up funding for family planning, particularly for women living with HIV and educating girls by giving them the information they need to avoid HIV infection and the skills that will enable them to be independent in future. I’d like to be a part of accomplishing more things like that in the future.
