I'm an older student... :(

Mezzo_sMama
Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:09:27 +0000

@Bunny (Love the screen name! Now I’m humming the darned song…!)- while it’s true that voice mature later, the soprano “pool” is huge, so unless you’re a Wagnerian singer, your lack of training coupled with your age is going to be a factor.
Don’t wait and don’t be concerned about “offending” your current teacher, do your research and get heard by another teacher at an area music program as soon as you can. If you are not seeing/hearing the progress you expect, you may be reinforcing problems by “muscle memory”, something which you are probably dealing with anyway. You may well want to consider finding a good ENT MD who specializes in voice and get a complete workup, including a scoping, to see if there are any physiological problems ( in the vocal folds, polyps/nodes) that need tending to. The fact that your voice teacher does not have a formal degree in music is not a point in her favor- gone are the days where a teacher may have had an illustrious stage career without the training that precedes it (there are a few exceptions in Europe,almost all male, but the younger “conservatory” training that they receive there is totally different from the US). The human voice is a living instrument, and a very delicate one, and once it’s damaged is not easy repairable- getting everything looked at so that you have a “baseline” would be beneficial.
Being perfectly frank, the chance of you getting accepted to a top VP program for either an undergrad or Masters degree is virtually nil, but that does NOT mean that you can’t get into a perfectly good program which will meet your needs and train you well. There are many places to perform other than the stages of the big houses and who knows, you might even decide to teach and train others like yourself!
Good luck and please let us know your progress!