At the top of every voice session I always ask the singer what the focus is today. Often singers know precisely what they need or what they want to focus on.

Perhaps the most crucial and often overlooked session is maintenance. This is that ongoing session work that allows the singer and teacher to check under the hood, blow out some cobwebs, make some subtle adjustments and more so that the instrument remains in top running order.

Maintenance sessions are not about re-inventing the wheel! It is about small adjustments, a good stretch, and knowing you are using your instrument optimally.

Maintenance sessions can be used as an extremely useful tool while you are in a show and during the run of the show. The can be used to balance out vocal building sessions. They can be used to balance out vocal rehab work.

What is so powerful in a maintenance session is the ability to collaborate with the second set of eyes and ears you trust. The collaboration is crucial. Find someone you can truly trust to see you and hear you! Listen to their philosophy, and find out if you align with it. Let them listen to YOU - not just your voice, but what you NEED; what you are currently doing; what you are currently dealing with; what you are working toward.

An artist who never goes on automatic pilot, pays attention to the nuances and adjustments as they prepare a role, an audition, a program, and as they continue to hone their craft within a role they are inhabiting. That attention to nuance gives them permission to adjust how they maintain their voice to achieve, and reveal as well as stay healthy and balanced and vocally accessible!

Maintenance is not a plateau. It is a luxurious decision to stabilize and trust that the voice and the physicality are accessible to do the work that is demanded of it.

Often, maintenance can be “maintenance and…” It can be very detailed and yet very big picture all at the same time.

EVERY singer, every performer, every athlete, needs maintenance. Maintenance of WHAT specifically, is what you determine with your teacher. HOW you establish that maintenance is between you and your teacher. What you do to nurture that maintenance is between you and your teacher.

The two most important factors: YOU and your TEACHER.

So, if you’ve been trying to do all the things solo, and be all the things for yourself, maybe 2025 is the year to delegate and build in some maintenance! Often, we get afraid to check in with someone if it’s been awhile (or a long while) for fear there is something wrong, or that person wants to change how you sing in a way that will cause a huge crash to the matrix. I get it! A teacher who understands maintenance and who understands the psyche of an artist, is not going to put you at risk - vocally, physically or psychologically.

We should be there to support, collaborate, make suggestions on adjustments, give direction and do no harm!

Find someone who understands this, and DOES it. Find someone that will create a safe and trusting environment to explore together.

Here’s to your vocal journey, your vocal and artistic growth, and to the healthy maintenance of it all!

with fondness & fierceness,