Choir Clinician

Over the years,  Julie has been regularly engaged by high school and community choirs as a soprano coach and choral clinician.  Having sung in choirs at a high level from a young age, she enjoys sharing her experience with others, particularly focusing on healthy singing, bringing the text to life and connecting breath to the voice as naturally as possible.   She sees a connection between the experience of teaching voice to individual singers and being able to communicate the most helpful of those ideas to a large group.  In a choir she sees a need to balance two things: helping individual singers better understand their voices while meeting the requirements of the choral piece at hand.   Julie enjoys helping choirs reach their potential.

Sometimes Julie’s work involves working one-on-one with individual choir members for short lessons on the fundamentals of singing.  These can be wonderful opportunities to address unhelpful habits and allow choristers to work less hard and sing even better.

Because of her extensive early music experience, Julie is often sought after to coach choirs working on early music (pre-1750).  Sometimes just changing the approach to text stress and phrasing can make a difficult piece much easier to sing.  Using her experience with these styles of music and engaging in a process of discovery with any level of ensemble is one of Julie’s favourite musical challenges.

A partial list of choirs Julie has worked with:  Western Canada High School, Central Memorial High School, E.P. Scarlett High School, Heritage Christian Academy, Bishop Carroll High School, Calgary Boys Choir, Westwinds Choirs, Calgary Bach Choir, Kantorei.