"Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.”' – Maria von Trapp
There's a debate about removing music and crafts from school curricula, despite studies highlighting their benefits.
This blogpost features Oda Zoe Hochscheid, a mezzo-soprano, vocal coach, and expert in international children's choirs. She developed the Robin classical singing method for children.
Here is a wonderful movement to find release in your singing by optimizing thoracic expansion and breath pressure:
Reach your arms up as if holding a Pilates ball. When singing high notes, add a squat, as if intending to sit on a chair, while maintaining the hold of your imaginary ball.
Expert Q&A with Oda Zoe Hochscheid:
" (...) I think when children sing, it is one of the purest ways of music making.
"You have a passion for singing and for singing children. How did it all start?
It all started at a really young age! My earliest childhood memories include singing, just for hours, improvising on anything I would hear and inventing melodies, texts, and scenes myself. It is just such a fabulous instrument, the voice, and I consider myself so fortunate to have been able to shape my professional life around it. That really is the core of it all: the desire to vocally express. I’m afraid I was born with it! Also, I think when children sing, it is one of the purest ways of music making.
Can you tell us about your background and how it has influenced your approach to working with children's voices?
During my time at the conservatory of Amsterdam, I got connected to a children’s choir that had just started up, and soon I discovered I love teaching children. On top of teaching and training new voice teachers, I grew to be the artistic and executive director of the choir, allowing the children to perform with renowned conductors and companies, such as Ton Koopman, Ingo Metzmacher, The Dutch National Opera and Ballet and many more. I learnt so much about high-level children’s singing during these years. At the same time, I’ve developed my didactic skills at the most basic levels too, teaching children aged 6 and up as well as and teenagers in many different contexts, including school choirs. I had (and have) many great colleagues who helped shape the toolbox that is the method “Robin”, by testing my input in their own lessons and getting back to me with their feedback, allowing me to pour knowledge into Robin in a practical and essential form. That process still goes on in the children’s choir I’ve set up after the pandemic in Italy, where I now live, and through the Robin customers community I have created. Robin is more than a condensation of my skills and experience from the past 20 years, it is a growing platform too, and I hope that it will continue to be so for a long time to go!
What are your golden nuggets of wisdom for teachers, musicians, and conductors singing with children?
Sing musically and expressively, and always sing with a free, breath-supported voice. Don’t hold back your breath or sing softly because you’re an adult! The children will intuitively copy a “breaked” airflow instead of singing freely.
What are the most important lessons you have learned about teaching singing to children?
Start with the body and build trust between your choir members. Robin is, among many other things, full of exercises in the areas body awareness, body expression, group coordination and space / stage awareness. Teach your students how to sing, but also teach them how to be expressively strong together and how to “listen” to each other: musically, theatrically, and socially.
Learn more about Oda’s workshops and Robin on her website: www.singwithrobin.com
