Meet NYCA singer Rachel Singer (WA)

Tell us about your musical background… I’ve been studying music for more than a decade, and hope to be studying it for the same again! I started off on the cello, and have settled on the classical voice. In the past I’ve sung extensively in choirs, and also spent some time in barbershop quartets, opera choruses, and in solo recitals. To me, though, there’s nothing like voices singing in harmony towards something bigger than their individual parts.

How many NYCA seasons have you done? I’ve been lucky enough to sing the last two seasons, 2016 and 2017, in Melbourne and Brisbane respectively!

What do you do when you’re not singing with NYCA? Ideally all the same sorts of things, but with the rest of life all mixed in! I’m studying voice at UWA, and sing in a number of choirs in Perth. My home life is very musical, with involvement with a few choral committees to develop my "behind the scenes" arts administration skills and involvement in as many musical projects across opera, classical singing and barbershop that I can reasonably be involved in! Otherwise I fill my time with bar and barista work – and usually end up practicing my music there as well!

My favourite NYCA memory is…Waking up each morning and thinking 'I get to do this all again today'. NYCA was an absolute dream and I have real difficulty putting into words how genuinely life-changing this experience was. My favourite memories are a mix of the mundane (laughing over every meal in the dining room) and the superb (fighting back tears during the St Paul's Melbourne performance, because I had never been a part of a sound that perfect and magical)

What makes NYCA different from the other musical experiences you have had? Singing every day is just a dream come true. Singing with musicians as excellent as these is another thing entirely. Singing under directors such as David Hill and Noel Ancell is unprecedented and I would drop everything to make that happen again!

What’s coming up for you next? At this stage 2018 includes further classical voice study at UWA, a trip to the Cardiff Festival of Voice, Wales, with Lost and Found Opera and few trips interstate for all things choral.