In a Manner of Speaking

Gillyanne Kayes Jeremy Fisher Paul’s first guests of 2022 are Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher of “Vocal Process,” internationally renowned voice experts specializing in vocal technique and performance in many different genres. A husband-and-wife team, they combine a deep understanding of the voice that comes from science knowledge, performance practice, and decades of experience. The three discuss pitch, specifically the extremes of the human voice as it relates to both speaking and singing. Jeremy and Gillyanne were first feaured on the podcast in July 2019. Gillyanne is a voice researcher, pedagogue, and coach, working with numerous artists in theatre, cabaret, and in the recording studio, while Jeremy is a national prizewinning pianist, performance coach and vocal educator. For their full bios, visit VocalProcess.co.uk. Gillyanne and Jeremy’s recent work includes the new Online Learning Lounge: more than 600 videos and vocal training resources for voice professionals. They are the authors of 10 books (five of them Amazon #1 bestsellers), including This Is A Voice (Wellcome Trust), Why Do I Need A Vocal Coach (Canu Publishing), and Singing and the Actor (Routledge). Their One Minute Voice Warmup app (Android #1 and Apple #3) was featured in the UK’s leading computer magazine. Their podcast, This Is A Voice, is in the top 5 percent of podcasts worldwide, and they have an updated singing teacher Accreditation program and a new merchandise brand for 2022 (Voicenerdz®). The fair-use audio snippets you hear in this month’s podcast were excerpted from the following YouTube clips: Eight Songs for a Mad King, by Peter Maxwell Davies. Casta Diva by Bellini, sung by Jeremy Fisher. Osmin’s Aria from Mozart’s Abduction. Billy Connolly in performance. The Doll Aria from Tales of Hoffmann. Peter Ablinger’s computer-driven player piano rendering the voice of Miro Markus. A Mariah Carey medley. Roy Hart’s demonstration of the human voice scaling 6.5 octaves, and Tim Storms in De Profundis by Paul Mealor with the St Petersburg Chamber Choir.   (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)  The post Episode 48 (Pitch) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Willem Hollmann, Professor of linguistics at Lancaster University, discusses the equality of dialects and grammar in English education. They highlight the bias against non-standard language and argue for inclusive education. The episode also explores teaching grammar, the lack of training among teachers, verbal deception detection, and the use of naturalistic speech in playwrighting and television.

Arika Okrent For the November 2021 episode of the podcast, Paul discusses the peculiarities of the English language with Arika Okrent, author of Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme. Arika is also a linguist and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She worked in a brain-research lab on her way to a Ph.D in psycholinguistics from the University of Chicago and now writes about language for publications including Mental Floss, The Week, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Science, Slate, and Aeon. For more information on Arika, visit http://arikaokrent.com. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 46 (Highly Irregular) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Elizabeth Wiley Paul’s October 2021 podcast focuses on the art of audiobook narration. His guest is professional audiobook narrator Elizabeth Wiley, who has earned multiple Audie nominations, Voice Arts nominations, and AudioFile Magazine Earphones Awards. She is also a Voice Arts Award winner for narration. Elizabeth works across a wide range of literary genres, with publishers and authors often seeking her out for her agility with dialects, rich character work, and facility with complex language. She is a professor emerita of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she taught acting, voice and speech, dialects, physical theatre and Shakespeare performance. She has also coached and directed many theatre productions in academia and professionally. For further information, see www.WileyVoice.com. Paul reads from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol while Elizabeth reads from Andromeda Romano-Lax’s Annie and the Wolves, copyright 2021 Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books. To purchase that entire audiobook, visit Audible.com. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 45 (Read Me a Story) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

David Crystal Paul’s guest for September 2021 is the respected linguist David Crystal, who is making his third appearance on the podcast. Inspired by Let’s Talk, one of David’s latest books, Paul and David converse about … conversation itself. To learn about David, visit his website and Wikipedia, or listen to David’s two prior appearances on this podcast: June 2018 and November 2019. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 44 (Let’s Talk) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Jacqueline Springfield For the August 2021 podcast, Paul talks about heightened language and Black playwrights with his guest, Professor Jacqueline Springfield of Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, Georgia. Often defined as a more formal, emotional, or poetic way of speaking, “heightened language” frequently features words that are chosen for their sound and power, not just their meaning. Among the many playwrights Paul and Jacqueline discuss are Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson. Professor Springfield is a professional actor, director, and instructor of acting, voice, speech, and dialects. She has been based in New York for the last nine years and has just relocated to the Metro Atlanta area. Her teaching credits include: The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, The American Musical and Dramatic Academy (NY), The Black Arts Institute at Stella Adler, New York Film Academy, Brooklyn College, Point Park University Conservatory of Performing Arts, Montclair State University, University at Albany, Wildwind Performance Lab at Texas Tech, The Kennedy Center, and The American College Theatre Festival. Her professional dialect coaching credits include: True Colors Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, American Players Theatre and Pittsburgh Playhouse. She holds a master of fine arts degree in acting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a certified associate instructor of Fitzmaurice Voicework. Jacqueline is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, and she continues to work as a performer in film, television, theatre, and voiceover. For more information, visit her website. The YouTube clips played in this podcast are used under the copyright doctrine of fair use. The complete copyright information on each clip is listed at the end of the podcast. For the full Raisin in the Sun clips, go here and here. For the Fences clips, click here and here. For the clip from The Mountaintop, go here. And for the clip of Marcus Gardley, go here. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 43 (Heightened Language and Black Playwrights) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Pamela Keller For the July 2021 podcast, Paul’s guest is Professor Pamela Keller of the School of Law at the University of Kansas, where she teaches what she calls “lawyering skills.” Appropriately, the topic of conversation is the spoken word as it relates to the law and, specifically, courtroom procedures and presentations. Professor Keller has been a law clerk and litigation attorney for a large law firm and, for the last 20 years, has been teaching lawyering and advocacy skills. For her complete biography, go here. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 42 (Law Talk) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Paul de Lacy The topic for the June 2021 podcast is glossolalia, which this month’s guest, phonologist Paul de Lacy, defines as “spontaneous, sustained speech that doesn’t convey complex meaning.” Sometimes referred to as “speaking in tongues,” glossolalia has been de Lacy’s passion since he began researching it in the mid-1990s. De Lacy is professor emeritus of linguistics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and an honorary associate professor at the University of Auckland in his native New Zealand. He is a phonologist, specializing in the part of the brain that plans speech sound production. His research has focused on how cognitive limitations produce asymmetries in the sound patterns of human speech. He has worked with speakers of diverse languages, including Māori and Nevisian Creole. For more on Paul, visit https://www.pauldelacy.net. The snippets from YouTube clips featured in this episode are used under fair use. To watch and listen to the entire scene from Cape Fear (copyright 1991 Amblin Entertainment), go here. For the Sid Caesar clip (copyright 1952 NBC), click here. The full “Omnish” recording can be found here while the full “speaking in tongues” recording can be heard here. Lastly, go here for the “raw tongues” prayer. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 41 (Glossolalia) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Mem Fox For the May 2021 podcast, Paul talks to Mem Fox, Australia’s bestselling writer, about reading to children. Mem Fox was born in Melbourne, grew up in Africa, went to drama school in England (where she and Paul met), and came back to Australia in 1970, at the age of 23. In 1983, she became Australia’s bestselling writer and has remained the pre-eminent author for children for an entire generation. Her more than 40 books include Possum Magic, Time for Bed, Where Is the Green Sheep?, and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. Mem’s latest book, Early One Morning, illustrated by Catherine Davenier, is aimed at very young children. It’s a mere 90 words but took her eight years to write. For more about Mem, visit her website at https://memfox.com/about/. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 40 (Reading to Children, with Mem Fox) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.

Joanna Cazden For the April 2021 edition of the podcast, Paul discusses speech and voice disorders with Joanna Cazden, a speech pathologist specializing in voice rehabilitation for actors and singers, and an advocate for preventive vocal health education. She served for 18 years as the senior voice clinician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and her 2010 book, Everyday Voice Care: The Lifestyle Guide for Singers and Talkers, is a widely used text in performing arts programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. She has also published in Journal of Voice, Voice and Speech Review, and numerous music magazine and guest blogs. As a lifelong singer and musician, with an MFA in theater arts, she brings to her clinical work a deep knowledge and lifelong affection for performing arts, and attributes her fascination with the voice to an experience at age 11 while auditioning for a children’s Shakespeare program. She has released six solo albums, performed with Pete Seeger and Amanda McBroom, and she maintains active music projects alongside her clinical and scholarly activities. Click here to hear some of her music. She was the founder of the special IDEA collection, Speech and Voice Disorders, which we created so actors might have real-life sources to draw on when their character has such a disorder. (Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)The post Episode 39 (Speech and Voice Disorders) first appeared on Paul Meier Dialect Services.