A five-day series at the Royal Academy of Music with James Platt and Michael Pugh
Location: Royal Academy of Music, Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5HT
Dates: Sunday 12th October, Sunday 23rd November, Sunday 21st December, Sunday 25th January 2026, Sunday 22nd February 2026
Times: 10:30am – 6:00pm each day
Suitable for singers, teachers and teachers who sing.
What we’ll cover:
✨ Day 1: Carrying the Voice — appoggio, portamento, spinning tone
✨ Day 2: Light and Dark Together — chiaroscuro, timbre, registration
✨ Day 3: The Singing Word — vowels as the soul of tone
✨ Day 4: Clarity Without Compromise — consonants as ornaments
✨ Day 5: The Living Laboratory — bel canto drills reimagined
The great bel canto masters left us a treasury of teaching — García on registers and onsets, Lamperti on appoggio and chiaroscuro, Vaccai on the legato line, Marchesi on daily exercises and the voce vibrata. Their words still shape the way we think about singing, yet today we stand on their shoulders with the added clarity of modern voice science.
In this new five-day series, bass James Platt and collaborative pianist Michael Pugh will guide singers and teachers through the meeting point of past and present: how the genius of these pedagogues is illuminated, sharpened, and sometimes challenged by contemporary understanding. Breath management and the lotte vocale will be revisited through physiological models of antagonistic forces (Janice Chapman), onsets through calibrated energy settings (Jo Estill), resonance and chiaroscuro through acoustic registration strategies (Kenneth Bozeman), and vowels and diction through spectral listening and perception (Ian Howell).
Each day will combine practical studio work, historical sources, and scientific insight. With Michael Pugh at the piano, participants will carry the voice on the breath, balance light and dark timbres across registers, sustain vowels as the soul of tone, and articulate with clarity that never breaks the line. The final day brings these strands together into a living laboratory of exercises for the twenty-first-century singer and teacher.
This series offers not only technical mastery but also an artistic ethos: bel canto as a tradition constantly renewed, where pearls on a thread become spinning tone, and chiaroscuro brushstrokes are reframed by modern acoustics.
