Gina’s story

I gained my Bachelor of Music Performance from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada where I studied voice as my major instrument and piano as my minor instrument. I later studied privately with Henriette Asch and Victor McCorry, both faculty at the University of Toronto. In Toronto I have sung with large orchestras as a classical soloist and with the Toronto Symphony Chorus for many years. I’ve sung with Tafelmusik and other small ensembles. I sing now as a soloist and with the West London Chamber Choir.

My favourite classical composers to sing are Bach and Mozart, and my favourite composers to play are Bach, Scarlatti and Debussy, but the ultimate is Beethoven. 😍

That doesn’t mean I don’t rock out at my keyboard singing Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison and even Taylor Swift, too! Good music is good music no matter which genre or time period. I was raised on rock & roll, country and pop as well as developing my own personal taste for folk, blues and jazz.

I have had some excellent experiences with teachers and I’ve had some not-so-great experiences. Many times teachers would instruct me to ‘sing on the breath’ or ‘use your diaphragm’ and not be able to explain how to do those things. They weren’t curious enough to find a way through an impasse in my lessons and it was just left to me to go away and work it out on my own, which was really frustrating. 

The best experiences I had with teachers were curiosity-driven. These teachers had an arsenal of technical exercises that solved the usual problems that everyone experienced. But as I became more advanced (particularly as a singer) there were obstacles that were specific just to me and my development at that time. This is where lessons became really interesting; I had teachers who were curious and open to trying different approaches that weren’t run-of-the-mill. Because of their relatability and investment in me, I trusted them enough to take chances and make sounds that weren’t particularly pretty in order to find the mechanism that was going to help me make incredible sounds, and sing pieces and passages that I never dreamed I could sing. They were passionate, they believed in me and never gave up on me. 

These are the teachers that I aim to emulate, and these are the experiences that I wish to cultivate for you.