Happy New Year!
Thank you all for being part of the Aria Ready community. I have truly enjoyed your questions, career concerns, and suggestions for new posts this past year. Many of you have inquired about when the workshops will be available. We have reviewed several online formats and aim to have the first one ready for beta testing in the first quarter of this year.
As we begin a new year of life and work, I promise you this: The January AR blog will be short and to the point. It starts with a question I often ask at the end of a blog: “Are you ready?”
If you followed the suggestion from last month’s blog and did a year-end inventory of your business—not your career arc, but the actual business system you have in place—and made the necessary tweaks or changes for it to run more efficiently, then I’m confident you can answer that question with assurance as you say to yourself, “Yes! Yes, I’m ready to begin the new year.”
Then, 2026 begins with your business system renewed and ready to go. Now you’re free to make any adjustments necessary to be your best as you start the year.
What’s the optimal perspective to identify what you may need or want to shift? Where do you begin? Start by listening to your “Brat”—that voice in your head that often tells you things you’d rather not hear. It might provide insights you are already aware of but have not yet acted on, or at least hint that some aspect of your mental or physical wellness practices or habits could be improved.
If nothing comes to mind, let me suggest how Carol began her new year, when she was still singing: She’d meet with her voice teacher and they “pretended” that she was a new student. She sang her most comfortable aria and then listened to their feedback—not just about the aria itself, but about her overall technique and the foundation of her voice. Let your New Year Aria Ready Roadmap start with an eye on the first of the four Cornerstones of the Aria Ready Process: *having a solid and consistently dependable vocal technique. Start there!
Or, ask yourself, if time, energy, or money were not an issue, what is the best thing I could do to improve my vocal technique right now? Today, what would make my singing easier to perform and more beautiful to hear?
Now is the time to take that first step toward further developing or refining your vocal technique. Your career and your confidence will thank you for it.
Share your 2026 goals in the comments below!
Happy New Year!
Until next time,
Avanti and Ciao,
David
*The remaining three Cornerstones of the Aria Ready Process are:
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Just found this blog and I am so happy to see all of this beautiful and brilliant content!!!!
Thanks Carla! We are always pleased when new singers join our community. We have several workshops and courses in the works for later this year. Please tell your singer friends about the monthly blogs.
David,
Excellent video you did.!Carol and I were classmates, almost, at the University of Arizona. I was a big fan. She appeared, of course, in almost all of the operas or comedies there. I was usually in the orchestra pit playing trombone. We had many of the same teachers, and sang in the same choirs. She was already quite a fine singer and actress. I'm sorry to learn she passed, and I am delighted to see that her book is still available and influential. Good for her, good for you!
Thanks for the kind words Tom! Carol always spoke fondly of her time at UofA. And was very proud of the work you all did while you were there. This past Summer I met with Lori (Bark) at the Santa Fe Opera. Are you still involved with the opera, or world of music?