Singing workshop with Zerafina Zara - 2 June

The workshop was well-attended, with 18 people gathering in the Scout Hall for 3 hours of singing with experienced voice coach Zerafina Zara. We had a range of choral singers, experienced soloists and beginners.

Zerafina encouraged us to talk about what we wanted to get out of the workshop, and who our favourite singers are. Then it was into the warmups  and voice training, with lots of peculiar noises and funny faces, and quite a bit of technical information about how the human voice works. Zerafina has  a great way of passing on lots of information, making you work hard, but still making it fun.

After a tea break we moved on to the “stagecraft” aspect of singing. Many participants had expressed interest in improving their stage presence and countering nerves, so Zerafina led a discussion about what makes a great singing performance, which really made us think.

Then she led us into the most adventurous part of the workshop - a “silly-off” where we learned a simple song and then competed to be the “silliest” performer, with the most exaggerated and outrageous gestures and movements. The amazing thing was, after doing this for a while and then reverting to a normal performance style, we all found we had become more expressive and comfortable with being a performer. A wonderful learning experience!