The Hidden Singing Teacher - Why group singing matters now more than ever

Why are humans naturally drawn to sing together? And why do we need this now more than ever?
Join us as we explore this deeply human experience.

In Season 11, Episode 1 of This Is A Voice, Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher kick off the new season with an inspiring deep dive into the transformative power of group singing.
Explore the often-overlooked role of choir leaders as hidden voice teachers and uncover the profound ways communal singing can strengthen social bonds, combat loneliness, and boost mental well-being.
With contributions from special guest choir leaders James Sills (Sofa Singers), Jessa Liversidge, Kerry Green, and Cerys Purser, this episode highlights personal stories and expert insights into how singing together fosters connection and healing. Whether you're a choir leader, a singing enthusiast, or curious about the science behind group singing, this episode is for you.

00:00 Shaping singing without 1-1 training
00:59 Breaking news – Bantam of the Opera
02:52 James Sills on connection in the age of loneliness
04:44 Why participation matters more than applause
07:24 Jessa Liversidge on choir singing and Mental Health
09:43 Singing your way to the green zone
11:49 Kerry Green on the power of group singing for aphasia
14:05 When words are lost, songs remain
15:50 Cerys Purser on bringing an entire town together in music
18:15 Empowering voices through choral leadership
20:38 From isolation to harmony – singing as social health
24:01 The power of group singing to unite and transform

Find more about our guests here:
James Sills 
https://james-sills.com @jsillsmusic
The Sofa Singers https://www.thesofasingers.com/
Bantam of the Opera https://www.bbc.co.uk/cityofculture/bradford2025/bantam-of-the-opera/
James interviewed on BBC Radio 3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026wsx?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile Starting at 1:18:00

Jessa Liversidge 
https://jessaliversidge.com 
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jessaliversidge/ 
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/jessaliversidge

Kerry Green 
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kerrygreenmusic/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kerrygreenvocals/
Glasshouse https://theglasshouseicm.org/press/five-minutes-with-choir-leader-kerry-green/

Cerys Purser
https://www.facebook.com/people/Cerys-Purser-at-Create-Voice/100085634885190/
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/about-vocal-process/meet-the-team/
Warwick - a Singing Town https://warwicksingingtown.co.uk/

You can find out about our Teacher Accreditation for singing teachers, vocal coaches and choir leaders and start your own journey here 
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/teacher-accreditation/

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Transcript

Jeremy & Gillyanne: This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

Hello and welcome to This is a Voice, Season 11, Episode 1, a podcast where we get vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. And welcome to Season 11. We've got a whole load of new things. We are, in fact, using a different recording device. Gillyanne is on a different chair, which is now why, if you're watching on video, we are more the height difference that we are in real life, rather than me being on a really low stool.

So, we were talking about What should be our first topic? Yeah, because we've had a little pause, haven't we? And pauses can be really valuable. Yeah. And then for anyone who's a long term podcaster, starting again, you're running through your mind what would be the most interesting thing to talk about to bounce off the new season?

So we decided on a topic. We did. And then there was one of these real serendipity moments. Absolutely. The topic that we wanted to go into is the fact that we've been having on our teacher accreditation, many people coming forward who are singing leaders and choir leaders. And in fact, we had a couple of people in Cohort 23 who had been choir leaders and singing group trainers completely and they've never really done one to one.

Yeah, and sometimes there's a little bit of imposter syndrome. Can I do your course when I've never taught a one to one? Absolutely you can because we have always said that singing leaders and choir leaders are the hidden singing teachers in the voice community. And the Serendipity Moment was the day we are recording this.

There was breaking news about a new project called Bantam of the Opera. And it's a collaboration between Bradford AFC fans, that's football, isn't it? Bradford Football Club, yeah. BBC Radio Leeds and James Sills. And we're very excited because we actually, we'd already decided that we wanted to ask several people about what their experiences of teaching in groups.

And James was the first person we went to. So we didn't find out that this was going to be released until just after we'd actually Asked him to do a recording. He actually WhatsApped to me this morning with the breaking news And I just also want to reference something else, which is last weekend There was an article in the Observer magazine in the UK about friendship by Professor Robin Dunbar, where he describes group singing as the ultimate icebreaker.

That's really nice. So the topic today is group singing, choral stuff, and quite why, why do people sing together? What's the, what are the advantages? Why do we sing? Yeah, well, yes. Why do humans sing in the first place? Absolutely. I think we should go straight to James. Why not? And James won't mind me saying he'd been away on a retreat all weekend and he literally did a brain dump in the car on his way home.

And you know what, James, if that's a brain dump, that is the most cogent brain dump I've ever come across. Thank you for that. The retreat clearly did the job. Here we go. This is James Sills in his car. Why is group singing so important? I think I probably need A few hours, at least, just to skim the surface of all the things that I hold true about group singing, that I know from my experience, that I know from the literature, the science that backs it up. If it had to come down to one thing, I think it would be connection. People often say that we're living in an age of loneliness and isolation. And I think that's absolutely true, but I also think we are living in an age of disconnect as well. And I think that group singing really goes a long way to remedy many aspects of that.

I think firstly, singing connects us to ourselves. It connects us to our breath, to our posture, to our physical body. And of course to our voice which is such an important part of our, Individual identities, it's our auditory DNA, and how many of us have had our voices silenced, either metaphorically or literally.

And so actually to rediscover and connect with your own voice is incredibly powerful. for that kind of sense of self. Absolutely, and we'll hear more from James later on as well. So to me, this is incredibly important, and people who do sing have talked about this for, not decades, centuries, about the connection with the self, and Obviously in, in a performing situation, perhaps with a solo or a small ensemble, then the audience in some way, the listeners are also involved in that performance, aren't they?

They are part of the performance. And I think sometimes in our musical society, particularly where we focused on kind of elite performance and elite musicianship, sometimes it's the performer up there and the audience over there, but it's, it's really an exchange. One of the things that will come out, we think, in this episode is the difference between performing and singing.

And I think this is a really interesting one. In fact, a couple of our people picked up on this completely independently. When you talk about performing, you're talking about doing something in front of other people where they are not participating. They're listening. Now, I'm a big advocate of an audience brings its own energy and every single audience is different and therefore the audience becomes part of the performance.

They become part of the performance by their energy, by their presence, by their listening. We are also talking about group singing and if you think of a rehearsal or even a a quotes concert where you're, you just have the choir members. It's like a run through. You have the people who are creating the music just by themselves.

And that's a slightly different energy. It's still a similar thing, but you don't have passive listeners.

So that was James talking about the power of singing for the individual. In other words, connecting with the self. And also I thought was super important. And research bears this out, that when people sing, it allows them to feel more confident as people, more confident in their social interaction. It can ameliorate anxiety.

It can address, self acceptance there are massive, massive, benefits to singing, which aren't necessarily about the performative side, but that's also for individuals. That makes sense. Yeah. By the way, if people haven't come across James Sills before, we should just say that he is the creator and the brain behind Sofa Singers, which was set up in the pandemic.

And he's also the author of Do Sing. Good guy. 

So the next person that we asked was Jessa Liversidge. Now, Jessa is a singer, she's a choir leader, she runs a lot of different choirs. She works with all sorts of groups. And the question that we asked, in fact, the question we asked everyone was Why choir singing? Here we go. We all know about the many benefits of singing.

And when I sing, whether I'm performing or rehearsing, I do feel that it's such a special therapeutic journey through emotion, through the past and present, reality and imagination. And I feel so lucky to be able to help others just experience just a fraction of this. And the people that come to my many varied groups and choirs are so different in their backgrounds and experiences, from a busy working parent to someone who sees nobody else from one week to the next.

Maybe people living with different health conditions to health issues, to caring for someone else, or maybe a partner with dementia or something like that also maybe people who've recently been bereaved and are very lonely. Whatever the person's issues or background is, when they come together in the room, I think if you create that atmosphere of warmth and encouragement and positivity, You can create such warm connections with singing.

I think it's because we all breathe together, we're doing something towards the goal together, and it's just the unique properties of singing, I think, that when we all do it together, these warm connections are made, create harmony together. It's such a special thing, and I feel so lucky to be doing it, and that the reactions from people and the difference, really, in people from walking into the room and walking out.

are really just magical to witness. After the first session of one of my groups last week, I asked them how it felt to be back, and I got comments like, I feel like me again, it felt like coming home, it's so uplifting. One lady said she had a very stressful few days at work, and the choir night finishes that off, and it just really gets rid of all her worries, cares, and stresses for that time that she's there, and This helps so much with her stress and anxiety and mental health.

And I get endless messages like that constantly. It's quite humbling. So, what a great topic to be talking about. I look forward to hearing what you've got to say. Isn't that lovely from Jessa? Thank you, Jessa. And things that I'm thinking about is she's talking about very diverse, things that people bring with them in terms of their social background and their health background their age and perhaps the kind of music that they were brought up with.

And the fact that they're getting together to sing and they're talking about shared goals. The shared goal thing is really important for exactly that reason. People come from different things that they've been doing that day. They're all in different moods, they have different emotional levels, they have different energy levels.

And when you come together to do something that is the same, it makes the group more homogenous. It actually helps people. It genuinely helps people to match heart rates, which is quite extraordinary. And of course, we know that it increases our oxytocin levels, which are our social bonding levels.

And I'm also thinking that there's something really important here about singing in groups that is about self regulation. We all, no more now about polyvagal theory and part of our understanding from polyvagal theory is that social engagement is one of the ways that we can bring ourselves out of the orange zone which can be a stress zone remember we can have good or bad stress positive or negative but when we sing We could be bringing ourselves into that green zone of safety once we've done that social bonding and had that sense of connection.

Maybe for anyone who attended our course on polyvagal theory for voice professionals, maybe group singing is a kind of glimmer. So if you want to find out more about that, we'll put the link into the course, and that was a course we did with Frank van Essen. And also more links for Jessa Liversidge herself, because she is a multi talented person.

She's written her own shows, she leads week long workshops with a co trainer. Just check her out. I want to move on to something a lot more specific, and that's Kerry. Kerry works with a very specific group of people in a choral way. Kerry Green is a very experienced singer, she's a teacher, she's a singing leader, and she's just joined us for cohort 25 of the Accreditation Programme.

And she's based in Newcastle. And I just want to play what she has written, and in fact this is a video, so we will just watch the video. 

Imagine if suddenly you could no longer speak, could only utter a couple of words or found it near impossible to form sentences. The frustration you may feel from mixing your words up or from knowing what you want to say is right there in your head, but you're unable to get some or all of the words past the tip of your tongue.

Hi, I'm Kerry Green, and I lead a choir at the Glasshouse called the Magenta Singers. So this is a group of people who have a communication condition called acquired aphasia. This can occur as a result to damage to one side of the brain, usually on the left, affecting areas which control the words and language system.

And it might also affect reading and writing. Imagine then, due to the melodic aspects of a song, you were able to sing out the words by using a different brain route. Imagine the freedom from struggling with your words. Imagine opening your mouth and your singing voice flows. The impact that has on a person with acquired aphasia, their emotional health, sense of identity and ability to express themselves is immeasurable.

Imagine that a group of people, all experiencing that similar response collectively, Singing together, expressing themselves beyond the limits of their aphasia. The improved mood and confidence members of this group have reported feeling after singing together, not only has a positive ripple effect on the rest of their day, but reaches many aspects of their wider life.

It's well documented how group singing can release endorphins, providing that feel good factor, or how oxytocin can enhance feelings of bonding and social connectiveness. Therefore, for a group of singers with communication issues who feel incredibly isolated, the benefits of group singing are all important and life enhancing.

Jeremy & Gillyanne: So good from Kerry. What a wonderful testament there, Kerry. Thank you so much for that. And do you know what? We feel quite privileged as course leaders to be assisting people like yourself and some other members of our Cohort 25 and previous cohorts in developing the work that you do, because this is powerful stuff.

Kerry brings up some really interesting things. And the whole business of self identity is so fascinating. And I think , it's particularly clear when you are dealing with somebody with aphasia where communication, just the ability to communicate verbally is so important to our own identity.

And the idea that singing and particularly singing in a group can help that is so amazing. And I'm guessing, I am no neurologist, I'm guessing because singing does use other parts of the brain than speaking, that what can happen is that suddenly those factors of articulation, forming words, perhaps even the in fact, definitely the memory of forming those words.

New neural pathways can be formed. So, I'm guessing that in due course, people will improve some aspects of their aphasia in everyday life. I think there are also similarities with dementia choirs, and I know we have a lot of people who work with dementia choirs, where people are, they can't remember words or they, lose the ability to create full sentences.

And yet they can remember lyrics of songs that they sang years and years before and can learn new lyrics in songs, which is quite extraordinary. So it's clear that there are different parts of the brain being used for this.

Good. Now we spoke to one more person, didn't we? We did. We spoke to Cerys Purser, who is one of our Cohort 21 people. And I think it was, I think it might have been during or just after she completed the training. It was during. It was during. She took on the role of singing leader for an entire town. And this is Warwick, the singing town.

Yeah, it's a really unique venture. So if you go on the website and you check out Warwick, a singing town, she is one of the choral entrepreneurs for this particular venture. I think what makes that job so interesting is that she's dealing with all sorts of different ages, all sorts of different social structures.

She's dealing with different abilities there. It's just across the board of the people that she's working with. So here is Cerys on why singing together. So I think when thinking about Group singing or community singing, I think of singing as being fundamentally relational.

And when we sing with a supportive community, we can really experience that relational part of it. I think anyone listening to this will probably already have a sense of the benefits of singing in a group. What really inspires me, I think, as a teacher and singing leader is, The nature of singing is a intra, interpersonal activity.

Singing and what we're able to do as teachers working with a group dynamic is to really embrace both aspects of that, and in a musical environment that Can also bring us joy and connection or bonding. What's really exciting, I think, is as singing teachers, we're able to teach and explore the singing skills through singing the intra bit of the dynamic where people can get to know and.

Use and learn and feel at home in their voices. Also be able to relate to and with others. And of course, if we can really take care to nurture the community itself and be inclusive and perhaps to really explore group singing, maybe not always related to the expectations of performing and performance and all of that, then that's really exciting too.

and I think necessary. Thank you Cerys. I think that's so interesting. I love the way that you've used the word relational. It's a relational activity and then obviously talking about again the intra forming that relationship with ourselves, as well as when you're doing group singing, forming a relationship with others.

I think what's really interesting about Cerys, if I might just say about you Cerys, when you listen to this, I know that you come from what in the past we've called an elite performer training where you trained as a classical singer and you performed at a professional level as a classical singer and as an opera singer and it's been really quite inspiring to see you walk the path from that kind of training to walking the path to something that perhaps is in a way is more inclusive and relational in terms interrelational and working with groups and using the skills that you have as a musician and a singer and very much playing out the hidden singing teacher in the community.

I think that's wonderful. I want to talk about the hidden singing teacher thing because Cerys picks up on this, which is. These choir leaders are in a position where they are the authority on voice. And this is why we think of them as hidden singing teachers, because they have the possibility, whether they have the ability, they have the possibility of helping people find their own voices and improve.

And I'm going right back to what is singing technique about? And the answer is helping you to do better what it is that you want to do. This is very much context based. So somebody like Cerys might just need a light touch with an amateur choral group. And I've gone and coached, in fact, we both have gone and coached amateur choral groups.

And quite often we'll step in, we'll go, okay, this is what you want to do. This is how you want to sound. Let's just do a light touch here. And occasionally we then have people who want to change genres, and that takes a lot more than a light touch. But it's very interesting that this is really where the hidden singing teacher lies, is that they have a job to, to coordinate, but they also have a job to train.

Interesting.

So Jeremy, what I'm hearing is that everybody's talking about singing as being relational. They're talking about the the multiple benefits of singing. And they're also talking about that sort of communication, that social bonding aspect. Yeah. And I don't know if you remember, but when I did my AOTOS keynote speech, one of the things that I wanted to talk about was the power of community singing.

And I talked about living in an age of isolation and yet 24 7 digital connection. We are more isolated than ever. And one of the things that's been noted by the World Health Organization as a result of this, not the singing per se, is that There is a new global crisis of social health. Do you know, it's really interesting with you saying that.

I was thinking we are in an era where we're more connected to knowledge than anyone has ever been in history, and yet we are less connected to people. And we're subjected to information or needing to respond to things digitally, as 24/7 and yet that sense of connection is definitely being lost. I had a Long conversation with a colleague of mine who's writing a chapter for a book a couple of weeks back and the conversation was based around how did your life change when you got a smart, when you got a smartphone?

Was it for the better or the worse? And I have to say, overall, for the worse. I didn't get a smartphone until 2010. It changed my life. I, yeah, I was, I put it off for about six or seven years. I had a pager and that was as far as I was going to go with the tech, but yes it's an interesting one. I think it's just like a hammer.

You're going to gently quarrel with me. I, no, not really. Cause I agree with you it's a tool. This is the, a smartphone or a computer, they're tools, and you can use them for whatever you like. And therefore, in themselves, they are not good or bad, but it's how you use them, how you react to them, and also whether you rule their life or they rule yours.

Absolutely. I'd like to quote from a lovely article written by Dr. Melissa Forbes, who's very interested in the notion of communal singing and its benefits. And I'm going to quote directly and we'll put the link in the show notes. Singers and singing teachers are an untapped public health resource who can be mobilized right now to help address some of the most pressing health concerns of our time.

including the crisis of social connection. Do go and check out that article because I think what's important here is that for those of us who had a more kind of mainstream music training, we went into higher education, we would have been training, note the word training for some form of performance and The thing is, what we're discovering here when we're talking to these people is singing is not just a performative activity.

It's going much deeper than that. It's a caring practice. I'm quoting from Melissa Forbes again. So, I think this is a moment now to listen to the last part of what James shared with us, because it's a wonderful, inspiring, rounding off point. And just before we listen to James again, I do want to say we work with people who are singing, singing teachers and singers who want to go into choir leading.

And we work with choir leaders who want to learn more about vocal techniques so they can help their singers more. So if any of those combinations are you, talk to us. Here's James.

And then when we sing with others, that connection is taken to a different level, it's taken to a kind of a social level. We know that singing helps create social bonds and it can really strengthen existing social bonds. It is the super connector. That was the finding of the Oxford University study, the icebreaker effect that found that the group singing is the ultimate icebreaker.

And again, that's something that I see all the time in my work. We know that when we sing with other people, it's synchronous activity. And we know that when we're doing synchronous activities with other people, that we start to feel kinship with them, We feel kind of a closeness and there's something about this singing experience where you're kind of emoting together, you're working together towards a shared goal, you're working together to create something beautiful that is just incredibly powerful.

And like I said in the age of loneliness and isolation this could be the most important aspect of group singing and it's that probably the first one that I'd always talk to if someone needed convincing as to why group singing is so important. And I think kind of linked to that as well is that singing Kind of connects us to a bigger kind of constellation of humanity and by that it can connect us to Other people it can connect us to other cultures It can connect us to our own sense of our own history and our own people and our own narratives through the songs that we sing and the narratives of Perhaps who we want to be and and and that is incredibly powerful We will all have a song that we consider to be our song a song that connects you with a loved one.

And it's almost like a hand reaching out through space and time, isn't it? When, when you, when you sing those songs and that's why we sing at the beginning and end of life. That's why we sing lullabies. It's why we have singing at funerals and, and everything in between. But yeah, let's start thinking about singing as a connection and, and as a process and not as something that's kind of performative.

That'd be my why of singing. Thank you. 

This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.