Anna Feldhausen is a voice teacher and expert for vocal technique based in Bunde, Netherlands.
She has been studying the voice for more than 20 years, and has been teaching all aspects of singing and speaking to singers, actors and voice professionals for more than 10 years.
She earned a Master of Music degree in classical singing at the Conservatory of Maastricht, finished a Bachelor in Teaching of Music at the Conservatory Maastricht and studied speech pathology and therapy fulltime for 6 months at Hogeschool Zuyd to learn more about the physiology of the voice. She followed lessons in Alexander Technique at the teacher training program at the Alexander Techniek Centrum Amsterdam to be able to analyse the use of body and breath in her students better.
She had lessons with various voice technique experts, to get a detailed understanding of how the voice works in different musical styles. Her most important influences were the lessons in traditional Italian Belcanto technique with Gemma Visser (Eijsden, NL) and the lessons in vocal technique for musical theatre with vocal health expert Lisa Rochelle (New York, USA).
Her in-depth understanding of the voice enable Anna to listen to her clients and quickly hear what they need. She has a diverse toolbox from which she can tailor lessons to meet the unique needs of each individual singer.
The goal of the lessons is always to develop the whole voice. That means all registers of the voice, head voice, chest voice and mixed voice, speaking voice as well as singing voice, and fluent transitions in between.
Anna has been teaching singing at the United World College in Maastricht, at the music teacher course at the Maastricht Conservatory of Music, at the music therapy course at Zuyd University, and she gives workshops and lectures on the singing voice at the speech therapy course at Zuyd University.
Anna works with children and adults of all ages, beginners and professional singers and speakers, and helps her clients everyday with enthusiasm and excitement towards more vocal freedom, expression and joy.
As long as I can remember I loved music, melodies, and, above all, singing. As a young adult, even though I was singing all the time, I felt like I could not yet express myself in my singing the way I wanted to. My voice would just not do what I wanted it to do.
I moved to Berlin, hoping to find a great teacher who could show me what I needed to change. I followed lessons with multiple voice teachers, but nobody seemed to be able to really help me develop any further. The upper range was always strained and I could not sing any higher than D5, the low notes sounded thin and not expressive.
Still I was sure that my voice had much more potential than what was audible at that point. I decided to take things into my own hands and learn everything I could about the voice. I followed different studies and did research to find the best teachers for vocal technique.
When I finally had lessons with teachers who really understood how the voice works, I was able to let go of vocal habits that were negatively impacting my singing and started to align the vocal process in a way that my voice could finally sound and feel the way I had always imagined it.
I realised how extremely valuable it is to have a great teacher, and what an incredible gift it is for a student if you can help them understand and train their voice to transform into a beautiful, flexible and versatile instrument.
I made it my life’s work to be the teacher for my students that I would have needed early in my career, and I live for the moments when students can do something with their voices that seemed impossible before.
