Over the past 20-30 years there has been a tectonic shift in vocal styles that are EMPLOYABLE in Musical Theatre. CCM Commercial Contemporary Music has surpassed traditional classical pedagogy in relevance.
TG Studio voice student, Dara Epstein, MFA NYU, shared her observations about the evolution of vocal training from her teens/early 20s, to today, and how she recognized the different approach was evident in her recent re-visit to Wicked Broadway. Btw, Dara sees many shows – most of them actually! Many thanks to Dara for her contribution to this subject. I added my own thoughts below.
From Dara:
When Wicked first opened on Broadway in 2003, it was an instant box office success. I was twelve years old, in eighth grade and in the full throes of my awkward adolescence. My parents brought me to see the show in previews, and I immediately fell in love. When the cast album came out, I listened to it constantly, trying desperately to coax my not-yet-fully-formed vocal cords to sound like Idina and Kristin (spoiler alert: I was not successful). For years, Elphaba in particular was infamous for causing vocal damage to the women who played her, including Idina Menzel. Twenty-two years and many many Elphabas later, though, the landscape has shifted. While pop and rock music had been a presence on Broadway for decades by the time Wicked came around, musical theatre training for vocalists hadn’t quite caught up to the demands of a relentlessly high pop musical theatre score. A quick YouTube search reveals a bevy of videos comparing Glinda’s and Elphaba’s highest notes across many years and several productions, and the early Elphabas in particular were screlting as hard as they could. I don’t say that to knock any of those performers; many actresses who have played the role have gone on to become go-to Broadway leading ladies and have been collectively nominated for (and won) several Tony Awards. I revisited the Broadway production in January for the first time in nearly a decade, and I was blown away by how healthy and gorgeous Mary Kate Morrissey sounded as Elphaba, even after years of playing the role on tour and on Broadway. As I watched her navigate one of the toughest sings on Broadway with grace and a wide open throat, I thought about how much musical theatre vocal pedagogy has changed in the last 20 years, and how Wicked in particular has shaped the way women and other AFAB people learn how to sing musical theatre. The current generation of performers inhabiting Elphaba and Glinda were literally raised on this; like me, they grew up belting along to their original cast recordings in their bedrooms, and also like me, probably learned pretty quickly that the 2003 approach just wasn’t sustainable.
I come from a classical and choral background, where I was taught that belting was unilaterally an unhealthy and incorrect way to sing, and have had to learn over many years how to adapt to the current contemporary style of musical theatre while maintaining the health and agility of my tiny soprano vocal cords. Idina’s screlty approach was thrilling but completely unattainable for me. By contrast, MK’s sound felt like a reachable goal as well as a desirable one. Even Idina herself has adopted a different approach to singing in the years since Wicked. With the success of the first part of the Wicked film, even more little girls get to grow up obsessing over this story and these characters and their friendship, and they have a new professionally recorded Elphaba to aspire to be like in Cynthia Erivo.
When I brought all this up in a lesson, Tracey asked me to write it down in the form of a blog post. As a lifelong student and educator myself, I believe very strongly in the value of adjusting one’s approach to teaching over time. Tracey and I often spend a significant chunk of our lessons discussing theatre and musicals and what they mean and how they make us feel, alongside breaking me of many of my old classical singer habits. Over the years I’ve spent singing with her, I have completely changed the way I sing, and found a consistency and adaptability that I genuinely didn’t think were possible for me. We wanted to start a discussion around not just healthy vocal technique, but the ways in which musical theatre training specifically has shifted and changed over time by sharing our collective thoughts and perspectives here.
From Tracey:
Dara could not have expressed it more eloquently: Over the past 20-30 years there has been a tectonic shift in vocal styles that are EMPLOYABLE in Musical Theatre. There was always a large gap between pop and Opera singers, and it was largely assumed that pop singers had little or no training and that the only real, ‘legit’ training was classical.
When I started my studio, the hottest shows on Broadway were RENT, Hairspray, Mama Mia & Jersey Boys. Agents and managers were referring their clients to me because I was not stuck in any particular pedagogical dogma or ideology. I knew that the students who walked through my door wanted to work or keep working as paid Musical Theatre performers. If they had any previous training, it was classical and they were being asked to audition with pop/rock/disco songs, belt high notes, control or even eliminate their vibrato… without getting vocally injured. There IS a way to belt and not get nodules! And those who hadn’t booked yet, often excellent dancers who were unable to pass their vocal callbacks, were desperate to work in the field they loved and give up their jobs as baristas, babysitters and servers. I’m proud to say many of them did! And as I evolved from ‘the dancer whisperer’ to also embrace actors and singers, the studio has grown and flourished.
We still work on the legit head voice here and do A LOT of work on mixing. Vocal health is always a priority. I do help students book roles in Traditional MT shows. But most of our focus is on CCM – Commercial Contemporary Music, both for technique and book building. It’s truly what I love and my students and I have a blast exploring the huge range of repertoire CCM offers.
See you in the studio!
xo Mama T