Lucia Cossu vocal technique and breath expert
Italian belcanto technique, Cossu method
A little talk with the great italian singer Eleonora Bianchini and why a professional like her, ranked 4th italian jazz singer, a stable duo with Enzo Pietropaoli, great career, winner of a merit scholarship at Berklee College, came having lessons with me. What did she found in our work, why it was important to her. Enjoy!
When it happens that you ask a young singer on the same word that the song repeat two times one after the other with the same notes to change slightly vocal position, so slightly not to be really clearly perceived in the throat and nearly seeming the dream of changing position, and a change in overtones appears, a light, a light into the word the second time, but not the first. And you have this movement of light that opens totally another consistence and horizon in the audience, as if the light of a precise nebulosa entered the song. And the singer looks at you without words, the same light in her eyes as she was audience. And she is nearly 15 and she hears that, and she understands, and she understands that you understand and hear too. And we both know that those are the reasons they call her to sing, the reasons she sings and thought happened by casualty sometimes, the reasons you made music your life and they can be dreamt and chased and fixed.
* the song was Safe and Sound from Hunger Games and the word was gone in the second Verse. Taylor Swift changed to change the sound, us to just have the same with this overtone that gave a sound into the note. The singer was MariaSofia Ferrante, not yet 15 then.
Today the postman did bring a new born in which I have some responsibility. ❤
Dear Eleonora Bianchini, you thank me for my instrumental wisdom. ✨ I thank you for your music and the great joy of this technical path made together, and the total trust you had in letting me shape your muscles and coordination bringing your voice in an unknown land that now is home.
Good luck Surya, Eleonora Bianchini made some songs I would not forget.
I am someone who can solve the reason why some people can’t be effective in a vocal technique or style, or when a professional can’t have the full or correct use of its instrument even with excellent teachers or coaches. I was a soloist and being trained in Italian Belcanto technique. A chronic disease that affects my inflammation level in the body related to a medical malpractice made my career last just three years during which I achieved goals I even had not dreamt about (further details https://luciacossu.com/about/).
I started then teaching, vocal technique. Being frustrated by seeing some structural issues that made some singers think about them and never relax into a deeper dialog with music I tried to found ways to solve them forever with the same approach to sound I had when I was a soloist. So I invented some physical exercises and discovered in what they were useful to a wider range of persons, even if invented on someone specific. This became a corpus of exercises, some totally invented by me, some are yoga or dance exercises modified to be useful for voice muscular chains. I have so found some principles to work on the reason why some can’t have a proper vocal technique even with good teachers. I found the relation voice-muscular chains in a way not imagined by professionals and now also the way some Manuel Garcia vocalises were intended and why even my excellent belcanto teachers couldn’t use them correctly. . It is a very specific work, nothing to do with others body practises for singers, useful but less precise for a vocal purpose. To be sure that the results with my students were really appropriate I put some people with and without vocal problems under medical control before and after our work together and it was confirmed the solution of their vocal problems in very short time, while a medical prevision of no improvement possible (https://luciacossu.com/cossu-method-program/ ) and those with no issues had confirmed an improvement in voice and posture.
When I say it is new I don’t mean that my work comes from nothing and goes to a new land, no. I mean that it is a step forward in what is the italian belcanto technique. I mean that it brings to the vocal land many that couldn’t previously reach it. And those who are yet there have a way to refine and obtain more.
That it is: a way to bring to voice (and voice styles and technique or even just natural voice) those who couldn’t before and to refine and find tools and expression for the advanced and the professionals.
It is a sort of way to put everybody to the zero point.
Enjoy!
Eleonora Braconi a typical example of my student after a good period together. Here 16 after 6 years of lessons.
She is 16, she studies with me since she was 10. Great personality, more jazzy than what she thinks now of herself. Here some covers and one of her compositions. Enjoy.
She is my students since a couple of years now. She arrived with a technical problem that made here not being well in the pitch and a too much air in the sound. We worked just technically for 18 month and then I could convince her, that she always refused in the past to sing in a class Recital. This is her first demo recorded in three hours after the summer pause. She is now involved in composing her first songs, looking for a band, to imagine projects and study some repertoire. Enjoy!
Elena Paparusso is a jazz singer and composer. She was my student from May 2014 to February 2016. We made a deep technical work she needed and we made a focus on a voice setting which could be useful not only for the voice, but specific of her musical nature. The results were the victory in the 2015 WinJazz Contest and her first CD Inner Nature.This is one of the original songs from the Cd
And here The Mask always from the cd Inner Nature. Enjoy!
On september 29th the release of the album in an historical jazz club in Rome, the Alexanderplatz: click here for the event
Her website www.elenapaparusso.com
Sister I. entered my study program in june 2014. Sister I. had an important surgery to save her life, a thyroidectomy in october 2013. After she had problems with the voice, she could not easily speak, singing impossible. She used to sing in her convent, many times every day and also as a soloist. She had a beautiful clear and natural voice, not trained and had some stuttering when child. She had calcium levels very low and they remained low durign the program and after. Now she sings again and as soloist as if she had never had any voice problem.
Here the certificates with the diagnosis of hypomotility of the left vocal fold before logopedic treatment and still the same hypomotility after but but a good compensation gained, singing still impossible for her.
*01/28/2014 Tyrodectomy on october the 3rd 2013, since dysphonia, and slight dysphagia for liquids. Negate having other noteworthy patologies.
Fibrolaringoscopie: Normal cordal morfology. Hypomotility of left vocal fold. Inadequate compensation of the contralateral fold. Normal respiratory spaces. No smoking. Require a tenseabductive phoniatric treatment.
After logopedy * 06/06/2014 At current control it is confirmed the situation of hypomotility of the left vocal fold, good compensation of contralateral fold
It confirms the hypomotility of the left vocal folds but now a good compensation of the other side. She had very low calcium level from the operation till several months after the last certificate you found at the end.
After #cossuprogram. During she could get back singing every day and in some Those are her vocal folds in photo and stroboscopy after nine months since we stopped our work. No maintainance exercises, no further therapies. As nothing has never happened to the left fold. The certificate confirms that
* Fiber optic laryngoscopy: True vocal folds normal in morphology, slight hypomotility of the right vocal folds, slight hypertrophy in the posterior closure as for suspected reflux. Stroboscopy: regular vibration, simmetrical and of normal amplitude.
And since our work Sister I. sings every day and again as a soloist as before the surgery. In may 2017 Sister I. wrote me that she had been the soloist of the Litany of the Saints during a Solemn Profession in the Basilique of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Porziuncola (Assisi). As nothing never happened to her left vocal fold, joy.
We could make the left fold work again after three weeks and in the video is her voice the first meeting and after 5 weeks. Professionals will hear that there is a substantial difference, even if in a subtle way since it has to get some training back after one year and a half of hypomotility. You can hear the gain in the ring, a little glow on the sound, a more clear timbre that starts appearing. This to me is a truly important sign and telling me that the vocal folds start having a correct activity, I know it is the start of having after just to make the chord being trained. She could sing in a little celebration of Sandro Pertini Hospital one month after the end of the program.
On 14th July 2016 my class sung in the recital for the end of the lessons. Rita Negrini opens the recital with Amy Winehouse Back to black.
And then she sings La notte
The closing songs of the recital: Rita Negrini sings Pink’s Who knew and Camilla Calling you from the movie Bagdad Cafè. Enjoy!
Camilla is 17 years old and we started our lessons on January 2016. I am her very first voice teacher. This is her in the recital of 14th July 2016: Dolly Parton’s Jolene , Burt Bacharach’s I say a little prayer for you and Walk on by, Calling you from the movie Bagdad Café. Enjoy.
Lucia Cossu vocal technique and breath expert 