Univ. Prof. Dr. Alexander Mayr
Opera Singer, Vocal Pedagogue, Researcher
photo: www.scenics.com
Since 1998 I have been working internationally as an opera and concert singer and in addition with great commitment I have also taken over occupations as a vocal pedagogue (Univ. Professor of Voice and Applied Vocal Didactics at the Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education at the mdw – University of Music and performing Arts in Vienna, Professor of singing at the Music University in Geneva, master classes at the Geneva Music University, the Lilienfeld Summer Academy and the Ferdinand Rebay Music Academy in Heiligenkreuz, etc.).
Since my musical education and my artistic career, I have been particularly interested in the physiological basics and the functional processes of human sound production – which are mostly hidden and not visible from the outside – as well as in the historical development of vocal techniques in the context of aesthetic, cultural and social aspects of different musical epochs. For this reason I started artistic and scientific research projects in the fields of “historical vocal techniques and vocal aesthetics”, “historical performance practice of vocal literature” as well as “vocal physiology” and “acoustic phenomena of phonation”.
In October 2014, I graduated with distinction from my artistic doctoral project entitled “The voce faringea, Reconstruction of a Forgotten Art” at the Kunstuniversität Graz. A combination of artistic practice with music-historical, vocal-physiological and acoustic research formed the basis of my interdisciplinary research project. As part of the project, I had the honour to work together with internationally renowned voice researchers such as Prof. Dr. Johan Sundberg (KTH Stockholm) and Dr. Donald G. Miller.
For presentations about my research, I was invited to the EPARM Conference in Lyon and the Pan European Voice Conference in Prague in 2013, to the PEVOC 2015 in Florence, to the Symposium of the Voice Foundation in Philadelphia and to the Symposium “Adventure Belcanto” at the Vienna Music University. I have published studies and scientific articles in the Vox Humana and the Journal of Voice and in November 2018 my book entitled “Voce faringea, an Art of the Bel Canto Tenors, History – Physiology and Acoustic – Exercises” is published by Bärenreiter Verlag (ISBN 978-3-7618-2468-9).