The Singer's Anatomy: investigating singers' experiences of performance through reflection on underlying processes

Abstract

Considering the ubiquitous nature of singing performance, and how celebrated the singer’s role is in our culture, it is surprising that singers’ experiences seem to be so poorly represented in academic research. This doctoral study investigates the view that singing performers may share common experiences that transcend matters of style or context, and that an understanding of such common ground may offer valuable information about the performer’s experience of performance states, thereby assisting a developed sense of wellbeing. In this study three distinct approaches were employed to gather information on the experiences of singers as performers. This data was triangulated through the application of a novel framework that explicated seven processes of performance to enable the systematic analysis of the singers’ experiences. In addition to an autoethnographic account, a survey was used to gather the reflections of 33 singers who perform across diverse music styles, and a third method collected interviews with three experienced singing teachers (specialising in jazz, classical, and musical theatre). Together these methods generated rich, detailed descriptions of the underlying processes of singers’ lived experiences of performance. At multiple levels the results generated useful insights for both the study participants and the researcher, and point to the need for further investigation of the complexities of singers’ experiences of performance.