Case Study #1 – Meet Jenn!
For the first Case Study, we have Jenn, an amazing singer who found her belt and more with my help and her work.
ME: So, Jenn: I’m really thankful that you have agreed to let our lessons be made available to the public. I have a few questions for you so I can help our viewers know a little more about you and what we’re working on.
JENN: Sounds great. Let’s do this!
ME: First of all, I’ve known you a really long time and I’d love for you to share a little about how we met and then what prompted you to reach out to me about getting coaching.
JENN: Oh my, yes we met during the millennium change when the world was rife with fear that everything would zero out and we’d all explode or something. Thank God you and I were performing on a cruise ship in Tahiti, the very last inhabitable place on earth to change from 1999-2000. You gave me my first lesson on belting and I remember thinking how good you were. I don’t think you had started teaching at that point. Flash forward 12 years later and I had just been cast as Maureen in Rent and was scared out of my mind, for I had never belted again since that lesson with you over a decade before. How I got cast was pure personality and chutzpah, but I had to scream my face off and had no idea where to start. I called you asking if you knew any teachers in the Dallas area where I was living and you said you’d teach me online!
ME: Yes! I love this story. We definitely had a good time on that ship in Tahiti! Can you also tell us also a little bit about your background – about Jenn before we met?
JENN: I grew up competing in classical singing but I loved acting way more. I went to musical theatre at NYU and was by nature a pretty conservative girl, so ingenue roles were all I ever considered or went out for. Then time went by and as I aged and got a little less conservative, my personality just didn’t fit those kinds of roles anymore and I started being seen as someone who needed to know how to sing a wider range of musical theatre music. I then hooked up with a cover band that lost their lead female singer and, all of a sudden, I was singing rock too.
ME: Very cool and also similar to many of my students. And what are you working on right now?
JENN: I just finished writing a one-woman show! It’s part original content with popular music woven in between. It’s on marriage and adultery. Sorry. That got heavy quick.
ME: Ha! That’s okay – heavy is totally okay, and it’s probably going to continue that way a bit as we work together. Speaking of which, what kinds of things can our viewers expect to see you getting out of our time together?
JENN: They’re going to see someone very open and very comfortable with you. Who trusts you because we have a history but also because, from the get-go, I recognized you knew what you were doing. They’re going to see me working on songs for my show that range from legit to rock. They’re also going to see you work with me not just vocally, but from an acting point of view AND also from a director point of view. That’s the thing that’s so wonderful about you, that you work with the whole package. Not just singing. Not just song selection. Not just acting. Not just what to wear and how to present yourself. You do it all. You know so much. May I also plug you for a second because I know you’ll never ask me this, but I do want to say that the reason I think you are so incredibly good at what you do is that you are holistic about singing. I don’t know one teacher on the planet (and I’ve been singing for a long time and met many teachers) who teaches the range of singing that you do. Most teachers roll their eyes at other types of singing. Most classical teachers think rock singing is harmful and most musical theatre teachers think classical is boring, and most rock teachers think musical theatre is dumb. But you embrace and love all types and not only sing them yourself but know how to teach them. That’s the other thing – you’re a brilliant singer who teaches, not because she couldn’t get cast and resorted to teaching, but because you prefer it to performing. That’s a huge bonus. I’ve been with teachers who continue to perform professionally and sometimes there’s a little bit of an ego or competition involved. You don’t have that, and it’s refreshing.
ME: Wow, Jenn. Thanks! And thanks for the plug. I’ll take it! I’m looking forward to digging into this. Do you have any questions for me before we begin or is there anything else you’d like to share with our viewers before we start?
JENN: Nope, I’ve talked enough.
ME: There you have it! I’ll be posting recordings of our sessions together twice a month. Be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss any episodes of Jenn achieving her goals. Also, stay tuned because I’ll be sharing info about her show and where you can see it.
No joke, Katti Power is a complete and utter bad ass. She’ll turn you into one as well if you give her the chance.
I’m most excited to know the difference between legit and belt voice and practice choosing how to sing and speak intentionally in a way that is healthiest for me.
[Katti] is the best singing coach I've ever had. I love working with her because she's so supportive, she has such a great ear, and she can get to the heart of any of my problems right away. She's positive, very knowledgeable, and most of all - one of the biggest reasons I would highly recommend Katti is that she's a great human being.
I can sing higher again and I’m more confident in my belting abilities, as well as my breath support!
Now that I have had that hour session I know how to overcome my straining and relax my throat when singing up high. The way Katti teaches, the illustrations she gives, and the exercises she uses help me to understand in a way I’d never thought about before…Knowing how quickly she fixed my problem, I feel extremely confident that she would be able to help anyone else…
Thank you so much for believing in me and for helping me become who I am today… You changed my life Katti.
I’m so excited – I got the role I told you I was called back for (the initial audition consisted of a monologue and my singing “That’s Rich,” which I had worked with you in my VIP session)! Thank you so much, Katti, for your training! I’m thrilled, and will continue to make the efforts to sing without fear and apply the proper technique so I can sing without getting fatigued.
Katti Power is bar-none, hands-down, one of the very best voice teachers out there. I’ve been singing for 23 years, and have had several teachers over the years, from NYC to LA. Many of my teachers have been good, but I learned more in one lesson with Katti than I did several months with other teachers.
I had the honor of working with Katti right before the Talent Quest National Competition. In only a few short lessons she had me miles above where I started out. Her methods help you stretch your range while keeping your vocal health. She continuously helped me get better each time we met.
Katti is an unforgettable voice instructor. I came to Katti when I was 18 years old because I wanted to improve my musical theatre sound. I had absolutely no clue how to belt before beginning [Unlimited Vocal Health™] and when I graduated from Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City four years later, I was the top belter in my class. The more lessons I took the more my confidence as a singer and an all around performer grew.
Thank you, Katti. I’ve learned so much from you; no words can express my gratitude!
I feel like I finally learned the secret of singing I’ve been looking for all my life! I always felt like my teachers didn’t quite “get” my voice and there was something either I really wasn’t getting or they really were not teaching. Now I know what it is! Thank you Katti!!
I’m singing songs I did not think I would ever be able to sing!
I use to think my voice just couldn’t sing certain notes in certain ways, but that is completely false! I wish I had known these techniques back when I was struggling and performing every day. And knowing how to sing in my uncomfortable areas without hurting my voice is amazing. I feel like I could sing almost anything now!!
I believe you can always improve your craft, so for the past few years I’ve been working with internationally acclaimed vocal teacher Katti Power.
Katti…helped me realize that my voice will always be there, and I just need to trust that it knows what to do. The biggest change was our work with how forward my belt is going. I had learned how to do it before, but something wasn’t clicking for me to keep it forward. Katti listened to my fear about having true power in my voice and allowed me to have a safe place to start the work to let myself be heard. I ended up belting a note I had tried to… belt for 10 years!
I’m really not sure where I would be without you. You have given me such confidence in so many areas and have given me the skills to take my performing to the next level.
Katti is BRILLIANT!!! I never thought I would be able to belt, but I was definitely proven wrong! Thanks to my ONE LESSON with Katti I have just landed a role in “Shout! The Mod Musical” and will be healthily belting my face off!