The School for F.M. Alexander Studies offers a wide range of opportunities for voice work.

"Alexander himself found when teaching his early students that the requirements of theatrical performance imposed a salutary discipline. He concluded that the Technique is best learnt if applied to, and measured against, the rigorous criteria of an established practical skill." Walter Carrington - Issue editorial Direction Vol 2, No 1 1973

Intensive Courses for Singers, Actors, & Performers
For details of current dates for voice workshops go to
Courses, Workshops & Visiting Teachers

For a newspaper report by journalist Sharon Mascall who joined our intensive course click here

Intensive course for performers

Our teacher training course devotes a day to looking at the application of the technique to voice. Thursday is our voice day, to which singers and performers, who are not training, are welcome to participate. On this day we have a maximum ratio of teachers to students of 1:5. The course includes a group class, individual work with a teacher, and work in small performance groups. We offer both a morning or evening course on Thursdays.

Regular teachers on our voice day include

David Moore is the director of the School for F.M. Alexander Studies and has been running classes, workshops and courses for singers, actors and those with voice problems for the past 20 years.

Chris Falk offers singing classes to beginners and advanced students. She has many years experience prior to training in the Alexander technique as a singing and guitar teacher and also as a performer.

Jenny Thirtle has worked as opera singer for Opera New Zealand. She offers lessons in the application of the technique to singing

Razia Ross completed her training as an Alexander Teacher in London at the School of Alexander Studies under the direction of Paul and Betty Collins and Vivien Mackie in 1981. Prior to that she trained as an actress at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and worked for a number of years in the British theatre. Since immigrating to Australia she trained as a psychotherapist with the Association of Somatic Psychotherapists. She has maintained a private practice as both an Alexander teacher and a psychotherapist since her training and has worked on five different training courses over the past 23 years and has run workshops and courses in the U.K., Canada and Australia. She is particularly interested in working with the speaking voice to rehabilitate voice problems as well as to enhance the clarity and tone of the speaker’s voice. She currently works at the School for F.M. Alexander Studies on the voice day, maintains private practices in Blackburn and Alphington, and teaches counselling skills at the Melbourne College of Natural Medicine.

Carol Veldhoven completed a Bachelor of Music at Melbourne University, majoring in piano with Max Cooke, Ronald Farren-Price and Stephen McIntyre. A Diploma in Education led to over twenty years of classroom and instrumental teaching at several private and state schools, both primary and secondary, as well as at Melbourne and Monash Universities. Her singing teachers have included Loris Synan, David Smith and Merlyn Quaife. She now sings with Ensemble Gombert.

Carol has performed extensively as both a singer and a pianist (though not usually at the same time!) both interstate and overseas, as soloist, chorister and accompanist. She has recorded for ABC radio and television, and recorded three compact discs for the Move label. She has also acted as emergency conductor for the Choir of the Canterbury Fellowship, The Tudor Choristers and Ensemble Gombert.

After a fall damaged both wrists, Carol trained to to become a qualified teacher of the Alexander Technique, completing a three-year full-time course, and in the process relearning how to create music again - this time with less tension. Carol has given Alexander Technique workshops at many institutions and conferences, and has taught at the School for F.M. Alexander Studies since it began. She is currently running a teaching practice at home, which she shares with her wonderful husband Robert, two Russian Wolfhounds and two jealous cats.

Vivien Mackie has been teaching the Alexander Technique for over 30 years, and has previously been the director of two training schools. She is well known for her workshops for musicians and she travels internationally running these workshops. She lives in the UK, but visits the school once a year and will normally work on the voice day over three consecutive weeks. In 2004 she will be here in the fourth term.

Voice Work with David Moore

David offers individual lessons working with voice problems. Over the past 15 years he has worked with people with strokes and neurological disorders, stutters, and singers, teachers, actors, presenters and others suffering from problems like hoarseness, loss of voice, lack of clarity and lack or projection.

Residential Course

Our residential courses gives those interested a chance to work on their voices. Our 2005 residential course which is will run from  8-12 October will include intensive work with the voice.  Visiting teacher, Cathy Madden besides being a highly experienced Alexander teacher is also an actress and assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Drama.

David Moore describes how he works with people with voice

By guiding people with my hands it is normally possible to demonstrate to people in the first lesson, a change in the quality of their voices. I can achieve this by helping people to undo the undue and harmful extra work they do in attempting to produce sound.

This is the easy bit. The work then is to for the student to gradually learn how to let go of this extra tension themselves and to move and her body in a way which will allow the voice to emerge freely. Voice tension is symptomatic of a pattern of tension throughout the whole body, and often in the process of undoing this pattern of tension will create unexpected improvements in other areas.

The time it takes to achieve a more permanent change varies greatly depending on the person and the problem. I may work with a person with a stoke over many months of two or three lessons a week. A singer may be attuned enough to her body to be able to effect a change within a few lessons, although sometimes a singer may choose to come for many lessons as her major singing lesson.

Click here to read how Alexander Technique can help stuttering

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School of F.M. Alexander Studies
330 St. Georges Road
North Fitzroy (corner Holden Street)
Victoria, Australia
Tel: 61 3 9486 5900