Before I moved to New York, I grew up performing in a small town called Wausau, Wisconsin. I was constantly working toward one goal: improving as a performer. But when I started, I had a myriad of bad singing habits: excessive jaw movements, no understanding of how to use my soprano range, tongue tension- I had just about every bad habit you could start out with as a vocalist. The problem is, I couldn’t find any teachers who helped me improve vocally, and all I wanted was to get better.
That’s when I was introduced to Dr. William Day. I was 15, and I was cast in a musical that had some incredibly challenging pieces in it. The director recommended this teacher for me, and from then until I left for New York, I worked with Bill to become as strong a singer as I possibly could be. He always told me that when I came in for a lesson, I looked like a “kid in a candy store,” ready to gain as much knowledge as I could. When I think back to this time of my life, a girl eager to move to the city to perform, I think about how the technique I learned from him got me there. Bill Day is one of the wisest people I’ve ever been so fortunate to meet. He helped me become who I am today.
Olivia Mathis: Before I ask any questions, I would love it if you could give me a quick bio of yourself, just to get a good sense of the timeline of your career.
Bill Day: It started, as far as my first degree, at the University of Dubuque. I graduated from there in 1962. I proceeded to teach in a small town in Iowa with a population of about 2,000 people, and I had a very small choir. I taught there for four years. After that, I was invited to come down and apply for a job in Monticello, Iowa, by the head of the music association. So, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve never really applied for a job, basically in my life. I taught there for 16 or 17 years. I left public school teaching because I didn’t want to have to say “be quiet” anymore.
In the meantime, I went back to college. I went to the University of Iowa, and through a lot of summers, I got my master’s degree, and then I went and got my PhD. But I did it the hard way. I did it traveling 50 miles into Iowa City then back home, every summer for about ten summers, while I was teaching.
After that, I thought, let’s try a two-year school. So, I applied for a job at the Appleton Fox Valley campus, and I got the job. I stayed there for four years. And then again, this time, the Chancellor of the UW system called me, and said, “We’ve heard about what you’ve been doing, and we’d like you to come and see about this job.” So I went from Fox Valley to Wausau. I thought I’d stay for maybe two, three years and then look for a different position at a four-year school. But I loved the challenge of seeing: Can I build a program in a two-year school? And I did. It got better and better and better, which is wonderful.
It ended up, as far as teaching at the University level, with some very prestigious things happening to me… I don’t want to keep talking like it’s me all the time.
Olivia Mathis: That is kind of the point.
Bill Day: Right. I was Professor of the Year- that was quite an honor because it was [awarded] by the student faculty. I received the Art Chaplain award, which is only given out to twenty professors in the state, and I received the highest merit grade possible. So everything was going quite well for me.
I also found out that I enjoyed teaching high school students. So I was doing that on the side, I was teaching the students from the public schools, Marathon, East High School, West High School, and D.C. Everest. After that, I kept going, and in about 2009, that’s when I had my heart disease. I had a small heart attack, and then Susan, my wife, suggested that maybe it’s time to give it up. So I did. But only for two years, because then they hired somebody who was fired, and the Dean called and asked if I’d come back. So I did until 2011. That’s when I finally called it a career. But I was still teaching a lot of voice students, and I had a church choir, so I was very busy. That, kind of in a nutshell, is how it all happened.
Olivia Mathis: What inspired you to become a music teacher?
Bill Day: In high school, I tried to imitate different voices. The orchestra director heard me fooling around one day, and she said, “That’s very good.” So she started to arrange all of these pieces of music for me. I sang at the country clubs, the boat club, and all these fancy parties. I did this for two or three years in high school.
I started taking voice when I was a junior. The voice teacher I had then had a big, low, strong, beautiful bass voice. But he had me try to sing the same way that he did. Here I am in high school, and I’m making this muddy, dark sound. I’m putting everything in the back, and that’s the way I was singing. I was taught incorrectly in high school. Then I went to college, and again, I was taught incorrectly. I took two voice lessons a week for my bachelor’s degree, and I don’t think I learned a thing, because my voice teacher never sang a note. So that’s what I had for four years in college. Never heard anything about support from below, so everything I did was glottic. Trying to find music for my senior recital was a joke because I had to try to find pieces that didn’t have a range of over an octave. Then I went on to graduate school. I started there, and I didn’t learn anything there for the first year. Finally, I got a different teacher. I started to understand what she was teaching me.
Then I went out to Aspen, Colorado, to study. This old woman stood me up in front of a mirror. For eight weeks, paying a lot of money, all I did was say “Ah. Ah. Ah.” I didn’t think I was learning anything, but all of a sudden, it all started to make sense. She was trying to teach me what I teach my voice students. If you try to sing, you won’t. Singing is just talking on pitch. Then I studied with all these different people, I went to symposiums, I went to a vocal training camp in Minneapolis, and learned a great deal there. Kept learning.
Olivia Mathis: In your time as a director, you’ve travelled across the country, and you’ve also done four tours of Europe with your choirs. What has been your favorite experience performing while traveling?
Bill Day: Probably the favorite in Europe was the performance in [Salzburg]. We performed in Saint Stephen’s, we performed in Saint Paul’s, we performed in Saint Francis of Assisi, we performed in Venice, and we performed in Salzburg, Austria. We performed at night, and we finished our concert, and a gent came up to me. He said, “I liked your performance. There’s a variety- it was wonderful”. And I said, “Well, thank you.” I’m done, the group was out drinking and eating food after, just celebrating. He said, “Look up on this on the top of this hill here. That’s a home for seniors. To my knowledge, they have never had any entertainment.” I said, “Well, that ends tonight.” So I said [to the choir], “Drink your beers down, eat your food, we’re going up to give a concert.” We took the whole group up this little hill. We performed from about ten at night till about three o’clock in the morning. We sang anything and everything we knew, and we let them sing. I put that right up at the top, more so than performing in some of these very prestigious cathedrals.
If you want to back up to [teaching] in high school, I can tell you about a very powerful one. My choir was invited to be a guest choir at the Air Force Academy. We decided, okay, that’s gonna be our pivotal point for our entire trip, but we’re also going to perform at the Denver Children’s Hospital.So we’re performing in the hospital, and the kids are all clapping. All of a sudden, we see two nurses run over, and I could see them out of the corner of my eye run over to something in the front row. We finished the number, and all of a sudden, I said, “Well, what’s going on?” And she said, “You see this little girl in the front row?” I said yeah. She said, “Six weeks ago, she had seen her mother killed. So she’d completely withdrawn and hadn’t made any movements physically or speaking-wise for six weeks. And she’s up there clapping with the choir. And that probably is the most powerful experience of my entire career.
Olivia Mathis: I want to pivot to private voice teaching. That’s how I met you, and that’s how I was introduced to who you are and what you do. I believe that the best voice teachers adapt their exercises to fit their students’ specific needs. How do you navigate adapting your exercises to suit different people’s voices?
Bill Day: First of all, all of the exercises that I have developed, as you well know, are originally mine. Somebody once said to me, “You do the same thing year after year for group after group after group, for student after student. Why?” I said, “Because they work.” So that’s what I start with, just to get an understanding.
[I always go back to] my “five magic beans”. First one, posture. You can’t sing any better than the body of your instrument. Number two, breathing. Number three, probably the most important one, and the one that every singer, including me, works on all their life, breath management. Then we go to the vowels.
Then we go to the consonants. Finally, after you’ve achieved some success with all of that, you can think about the song, the interpretation of the song, the phrasing of the song, and that’s what a vocal coach does.
I’ve got a girl right now, incredibly beautiful opera voice. How did it get there? Four years ago, when I started, [her voice] was very quiet, demure. As a matter of fact, I asked some of her friends. I said, “How do I get this girl to open up?” But working, and getting to know me, and realizing that I’m really like a friend with my students, they relax, and then they start to open up. And I could see where this girl’s voice was going. Through resonance, I started to open it up and make it bigger, but not just bigger, richer. The voice had more presence. I have [another student]; I started with all the basics. He still has a problem with intonation. I said, “Let’s see if this summer, I can finally get this intonation problem straightened up”. It’s not a strong one, but it’s there. So that’s my challenge for this particular voice.
Now, where do I get all of this? From all the symposiums, [from reading] book after book after book on vocal techniques. I’ve read a lot. And still, it’s not unusual for me to go to the doctor’s office, and while I’m waiting for my wife, Susan, I have a music book in my hand, reading about something, and saying, “Okay, even at my age, I could try this idea.” What it really is, is finding out what works. I’ve done that with teaching choral music, and I’ve done that with voice.
Olivia Mathis: What is your favorite piece of art that you’ve ever seen?
Bill Day: As far as musicals are concerned, Fiddler on the Roof. It has every kind of emotion that you could possibly put into a musical, and it also teaches about the Jewish faith. There aren’t a lot of musicals that educate. Most of them just entertain. Fiddler on the Roof educates and entertains.
My favorite piece of artwork would have to be the Mona Lisa, because when I was in Europe, back when it was sensible to go to Europe- you’ve been there, so you know what I’m talking about- the crowds and the queues and everything else… I had the opportunity to sit in front of the Mona Lisa for about half an hour before closing, with nobody else around me, just sitting on a chair to look at it from every angle. It was a very pristine, quiet, silent type of situation.
As far as composer, Mozart. Always. This is why you learned Mozart, this is why I teach Mozart, this afternoon I’m teaching Mozart. Why?Because the man really understood the voice. The other composer would be Handel. These are the two composers who understood the voice probably better than anybody else.
Olivia Mathis: You touched on this briefly- that even now, you’re still studying and reading about the voice. You’ve always said that no matter how much experience you’ve had, you should never stop learning. It’s clear with that philosophy, learning is your passion just as much as teaching is. In what ways has your method of teaching about the voice evolved over the years, simply because you’ve gathered more information?
Bill Day: My very first year teaching, I was in this little school in Iowa, and my job was to take these kids to competition as a choir. I kept working with them. First of all, when I started, I had twelve girls and seven guys, and five of the guys couldn’t sing. I kept working and working and working and working. And I stayed in my vacuum. I kept thinking, these kids are getting better and better and better. Finally, we went to the contest, we got two threes and a four. Now that’s about as bad as you can do. I proceeded to ride home in a yellow school bus with a bunch of boys and girls crying because of the rating they got.
So I got home, I walked down by the river- no, I wasn’t going to jump in- but I thought “You’d better learn something about [teaching voice] or get out of it.” That is the only time I failed in my life, as far as voice or choral music, because I hadn’t challenged myself to learn. From 1962 to ‘63, ‘64, that era, I challenged myself to bring people in who knew more than I did. I kept gaining information and trying this and that. I went to the symposiums. I sang with Robert Shaw, the finest choral director in the world. I sang for Sir David Willcocks, I went to workshops with the King Singers, I went to workshops for a composer by the name of Paul Salamunovich, and I worked with the Roger Wagner Chorale. I learned and kept learning and kept learning.
[I have a student now who] is the finest male voice I’ve ever taught, but it wasn’t that way four years ago. But his attitude was incredible, from back when he was only a freshman. I could see that, so we kept learning together. This is what it’s all about. I learn from my students just as well. It’s not me standing up there being pompous at all.
Olivia Mathis: What is the wisest piece of information you learned from a teacher or mentor?
Bill Day: Robert Shaw, I came up to him and said, “Would you rather work with your professional choir or a group of enthusiastic amateurs?” And he said, “Enthusiastic amateurs because they’re genuine. They’re not being paid to perform. So they want to learn, they have an insatiable appetite to learn.” And that’s probably the most important one. I thought that was kind of profound.
Olivia Mathis: There’s a lot of misinformation floating around regarding the human voice and proper vocal technique. There are teachers out there who aren’t the most helpful. What are some common vocal myths you hear, and what are some things that people can look out for when they’re seeking a good voice teacher?
Bill Day: There are a lot of voice teachers who really do not know what they’re doing, and they’re taking money, as far as I’m concerned, under false pretenses. I’m not being critical, I’m being matter-of-fact about what really goes on. It’s so easy to fake your way through being a voice teacher. I can’t think of any other field that you could be more of a fraud and get by with it. Seriously. By saying, “Just work on your breathing, and come back next week, and bring me some more money.” They don’t say that, but that’s what a lot of them are doing.
I teach voice three ways. I teach scientifically what’s really going on, I teach what I call hocus pocus. My hocus pocus is “I want you to feel”, “I want you to look at my wall and see a bunch of E’s.” Imagery.
Then I teach voice by how it feels. You can probably count on one hand the number of times I ever asked you, “How does it sound?” It’s always “How does it feel?”
Olivia Mathis: Well, that helps with, for example, the show that I’m currently doing. It’s sometimes hard to hear yourself unless you have ear monitors. Unless you can get those, you’re listening to a track, instruments, and other vocalists coming through the speakers. If it wasn’t for learning how everything feels when I’m doing certain things… I mean, I barely know how it sounds. And I’m still able to sing on pitch, with resonance and feeling, strictly because I know how it feels in my body. It’s really important because you’re not always going to have how it sounds.
Bill Day: I’m glad you’re still sticking with how it feels. And you walk away at the end of the evening, and your voice may be fatigued, but not sore.
[As for vocal misconceptions,] don’t drop your jaw, because if you drop your jaw, you’re going to set it and lock it in place. If you lock it in place, that’s going to cause tension in your larynx. It’s that simple. This is why I always told you, give me the beginning feeling of a yawn. When you give me the beginning feeling of a yawn, you’ll put your hands down where the laryngeal pharynx is and feel that space open up. Belting. That’s another source [of misinformation]. A lot of the Broadway musicals now call for that. That can be very harmful to the voice if you don’t learn how to belt correctly. Belting is a matter of thinning out the space. It’s not a matter of laying the tongue against the teeth.
[When finding a voice teacher], never take voice from someone who cannot sing. Never. Because they can’t get across the communication that’s needed to make a difference in their voice. If I can’t do it, I can’t expect my students to do it. A voice teacher needs to be able to sing to be able to demonstrate to a voice student what they want.
Olivia Mathis: From a student’s perspective, it’s not just about demonstrating. It’s about having somebody to look up to, somebody to aspire to be like. That’s very important for me, for any teacher in general. I always felt that way with you.
Bill Day: Well, thank you. There are a lot of teachers out there who are collecting money under false pretenses. And then there are a lot of teachers who are not insistent. I will say to my students, “I’m tough, but I’m tough because I want you to learn to sing correctly.” I had a girl who started with me this summer. She lasted one lesson. She was totally frustrated because she couldn’t do it right away. So she hasn’t been back. That doesn’t happen that often. Most people know that if they come to me, I’m going to be tough, I’m going to be fair, but I’m going to really educate them.
Dr. William Day is actively taking new students, so if you’re interested in learning more from him, send an email to thedays4044@gmail.com.