Meisner in Music: Merging Beautiful Singing with Emotional Acting
Thursday 29th February 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
As vocalists, we’re often taught one set of tools in voice lessons and another in acting classes but left on our own to put the two together. It can feel like we have to choose between beautiful singing and emotional acting, sacrificing the integrity of one to focus on the other.
Sanford Meisner, internationally-acclaimed acting teacher (and concert pianist!), spent over 60 years developing a technique that was simplifying, grounding, step-by-step, and allowed artists to stay present, trust themselves, and find freedom in performance. Meisner-trained actors include Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates, Viola Davis and Sam Rockwell.
Even as the highly-effective technique proved to produce some of theatre and film’s finest performances, after Meisner’s death in 1997, the question still remained: 'How do we take this freeing technique that emphasises spoken text and working off a partner and apply it to music and often performing with no partner?'
20 years later, Meisner in Music began to seek to bridge this gap.
While Founder Jillian Paige originally created Meisner in Music to be an acting class technique specifically for singers, over its years of existence we found that it can help musicians with so much more, including performance anxiety, trust in technique, artistic agency, and presence and embodiment both on stage and in life.
In our workshop with the Voice Study Centre, participants will learn the foundational tool of the Meisner technique, 'repetition', and gain insight into additional aspects of the technique that are particularly useful for singers such as emotional preparation and 'the physical impediment'. Attendees can expect to leave with tools to apply to their own artistry and their students to help them get out of their heads, trust in their voices, and, most importantly, trust in themselves.
Jillian Paige
Jillian Paige is the Founder of Meisner in Music, the premier class to infuse the Meisner Technique with singing. Jillian received her Master’s in Music Theatre from Oklahoma City University, her Bachelor’s in Classical Vocal Performance from Belmont University, and studied Meisner under Terry Martin (a direct pupil of Meisner’s), and Ted Wold.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Tuesday 22nd April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday 23rd April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Thursday 24th April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Friday 25th April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Monday 28th April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday 29th April 2025
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
(London Time)
Certificate In Applied Neuroscience And Voice with Voice Scientist Heidi Moss
This six-day course is designed to provide an introduction to the neuroscience of vocalization. It aims to provide a foundation for those who are looking to fuse science with art and understand that the voice is so much more than an instrument.
Monday 28th April 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Tuesday 29th April 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 30th April 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Thursday 1st May 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
(London Time)
Mental Health and Musicians Certificate with Dr George Musgrave
Join Dr George Musgrave – co-author of Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition (2020) – for a deep dive into the social and psychological experiences of musical career creation and development, as well as the effects of the music industry and its practices on mental health. Dr Musgrave will present an overview of current research on career musicianship and mental health before exploring an array of specific themes, including success (and the management thereof); career sustainability; and cultural, social and symbolic capital. A comprehensive look at the ethics and morality of the industry provides the finale to this course!
Thursday 1st May 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
The Neuroscience of Speech and Song
Dr Michel Belyk
The Neuroscience of Speech and Song offers an engaging and accessible introduction to the fascinating interface between the brain and some of the things that we use it for. This course is designed to unravel the complex processes underlying how we speak and sing, using simple and accessible language.This course will start from basics and assume very little prior knowledge. We will cover the basic structure of the brain and how it works in general, then narrow in on specific processes that are relevant to speech and song!