Schedule: Q2 2013

Please note: schedule subject to change

April 5: 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.

April 12: Sweet Hormony

Transgendered vocalists Eli Conley and Ashley Moore talk about how singers can successfully negotiate the shift from singing as a male to singing as a female and vise-versa. (Re-run: program initially aired on October 26, 2012)

April 19: Linguistic Gymnastics
Composer Mason Bates, who has written song cycles for Chanticleer and is currently affiliated with the San Francisco Symphony, talks about how composers tackle setting texts in different languages.

April 26: 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. 

May 3: 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.

May 10:  Listen Up

Voice-speech therapist Sarah Schneider talks about how voice care professionals work with their ears to gauge vocal problems and the role that listening plays in treating voice disorders in our predominantly visual-oriented culture.  

May 17: First World Problems?
Voice health experts Soha Al-Jurf, Shirley Gherson and Sarah Schneider explore vocal healthcare trends around the world and chat about the extent to which vocal healthcare is widely accessible to people all over the globe or whether it's predominantly a first world phenomenon. 

May 24: Pucker Up
Virtuoso whistler and music journalist Jason Victor Serinus chats about the art of whistling and making a career out of this oft derided vocal art form. (Re-run: program initially aired on October 12, 2012)

May 31: Slave to Song
Vocalist Linda Tillery, artistic director of the Cultural Heritage Choir, and Sam Edwards, co-founder of Friends of Negro Spirituals, discuss the African roots of the word "spiritual" and the vocal music traditions that led to -- and came out of -- the development of this quintessentially American vocal art form. (Re-run: program initially aired on September 28, 2012)

June 7: Drinking/Songs
VoiceBox and Dogfish Head Craft Brewery join forces for another unforgettable interactive journey into the rich global link between drinking ale and singing songs. Featuring The Fill A Steins men’s vocal ensemble, certified beer cicerone Sayre Piotrkowski, VoiceBox host Chloe Veltman and interactive intermission entertainment by Smule. Recorded live before a studio audience at 50 Mason Social House in San Francisco on May 29, 2012.

June 14: What a lovely Aria! I mean Number.
Opera blogger Charlise Tiee (Opera Tattler) and musical theatre blogger Chad Jones (Theater Dogs) discuss the often porous line that exists between the worlds of musical theatre and opera.

June 21: Pitch Perfect?
Ever since Cher scored a hit with “Believe” in 1998, Auto-Tune, a digital tool which helps singers adjust their vocal pitch, has become a ubiquitous presence in the pop music world. Join Andy Hildebrand, the inventor of Auto-Tune, for a discussion about the tool’s legacy and future.

June 28: The Many Voices of Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s voice has been compared to sandpaper and described as "a catarrhal death rattle." Blues music aficionado Devon Strolovitch discusses the colors of Dylan's vocal instrument. (Re-run: program initially aired on November 23, 2012)