VoiceBox

Beethoven for Singers

William Meredith, director of Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, chats about the brilliance of Beethoven’s vocal masterworks, which tend to garner less attention than the composer’s symphonies.

With a Little Help From My Friends

Dr. Krzysztof Izdebski, the founder and chairman of the Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation, chats about the evolution of voice care as a branch of medicine and how the often-overlapping network of laryngologists, speech pathologists, singing voice specialists, vocologists, singing teachers, voice coaches and other experts all play a role in ensuring that patients receive the care they need to be able to use their voices fully once again.

Sweet Hormony

Transgendered vocalists Eli Conley and Ashey Moore talk about how singers can successfully negotiate the shift from singing as a male to singing as a female and vise-versa.

Street Stage

Urban designers John Matthew Francis and Ross Hansen, the creative forces behind a new kind of mobile stage that can be assembled out of the back of a van in half an hour, Dr. Paul Simpson, a lecturer in human geography at Keele University, UK, and street performer Nick Jones discuss the dynamics of the urban performance environment.

Salon97 Comes to VoiceBox

Cariwyl Hebert, the founder of Salon97, a Bay Area-based organization that creates listening parties and other events for people who are curious about classical music, transforms KALW's Studio B into a setting ripe for a careening discussion about four iconoclastic composers and their greatest vocal works.

Rapper's Delight

Melissa Czarnik, an emcee and poet from Milwaukee, and her producer, Eric Mire, chat about the musicality of rap. (playlist)

Renaissance Man

Stanford music professor Jesse Rodin discusses the luminous polyphonic style of the great Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez and what it means to truly “know” a piece of Renaissance vocal music.

It takes two, baby

Husband and wife vocal artists Nicki and Tim Bluhm talk about what it takes to sing and live as a duo and explore the history of famous duetting couples.

There’s an app for that

Prerna Gupta, a vocalist and the CEO of Khush, a startup that creates digital tools for singers like Songify and AutoRap, talks about how the latest apps for smartphones and tablets are changing the way singers approach their craft.

All that jazz

Randall Kline, director of the San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ), and jazz vocalist Tiffany Austin, discuss what the launch of San Francisco’s new jazz center, the country’s only free-standing building dedicated to jazz in the United States, will mean for vocal artists.

Sing song merrily on high

Ken Malucelli, a carol composer and the director of The Merrie Olde Christmas Carolers, a nationally-franchised caroling group, and jazz musician / Christmas music aficionado Tim Lewis, chat about how to write and perform heartwarming winter holiday songs.

Top of the charts

Lara Downes, a renowned pianist and the artistic director of the Mondavi Center Young Artists’ Competition which this year focuses on vocal performance, and John Neal, the director of the Harmony Sweepstakes national a cappella tournament, discuss why singing competitions matter.

Singing all the way to the polls

Composer and arts blogger Brian Rosen explores election season songs and the history of presidential candidates’ singing skills.

Killing me Softly

The thought of singing in public scares even the most self-assured people out of their wits. Psychiatrist Jerome Oremland, vocal coach Mark Bosnian, Beth Pinney, worship leader at Laguna Presbyterian Church in Laguna Beach, CA, and journalist Michelle Holmes, explore why so many of us are afraid to sing as well as innovative techniques for helping people to overcome their hang-ups and belt out a tune with confidence. Program generously underwritten by Meyer Sound.

Swinging the Latin American Songbook

Venezuelan vocalist Jimmy Kansau takes listeners on a journey through the music of early to mid 20th century Latin America and the Caribbean.

Yoga Of Voice

There are countless ways in which voice as been used within yoga over the last several thousands of years, including Vedic hymns, tantric mantra, devotional chant, Indian raga and more. Yoga and singing instructor Ann Dyer talks about how and why these ancient practices are relevant today and how they can make professional singers better performers.

Vocal Music from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress vocal music specialist James Wintle joins VoiceBox host Chloe Veltman (who’s spending the summer as a Research Fellow on the ‘Songs of America Project’ at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC) for a discussion about how singers and singing group directors can use the LOC's astounding vocal music collection to create unusual and exciting programming choices.

Street Smarts

On her East coast travels, Chloe Veltman meets Tim Harrington and Paul Wright of the vocal and guitar/cello duo Tall Heights for a conversation about the street music scene in Boston.

Singing and the Brain

Concetta Tomaino, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in New York and Indre Viskontas, a Bay Area-based opera singer with a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in cognitive neuroscience, discuss the profound connection between our minds and voices.

Playing Hard to Get

Helene Whitson, director of the Bay Area Choral Music Archive, digs deep into the depths of her enormous choral music collection to share some of the global choral music scene’s most difficult-to-come-by recordings.