Kristin Linklater Rest in Peace

We were privileged to have her as a keynote speaker at Eurovox 2015 in Riga, and it was wonderful to see her working with singers in so many fresh and innovative ways. She was an amazing speaker, inspirational on so many levels, she loved the human voice, the human body and the human brain and her heart and soul was in everything she did. She never ceased to learn, she came to nearly every class that was held in Riga, eager to learn, to participate, to question…

She was invited to speak in Chester at the UK’s AOTOS 2016 conference and again there was more laughter, more learning and incredible energy. Her books are a revelation in understanding voice from a speaking and acting perspective but they ring true for singers too. However to be able to see and hear and watch her in the flesh was something else- unforgettable. She was the keynote speaker in Copenhagen at Pevoc 2019 and I wrote:

“Kristin Linklater was an amazing and wonderful ‘tour de force’, theatrical, funny and inspirational. She dodged using the microphone and introduced some new terms ‘oxycipotal-pharyngeal’ mouth and cranial floor!”

Watching her speak poetry without microphone was a lesson in voice I shall never forget, what an actress she was, even in her eighties (though you would never have guessed) her voice had colours, timbres, inflexions at every turn of phrase. A Master of her art.

We know she worked with actors and theatre companies all over the world and she was an internationally famous teacher and we were so lucky to have her teach us in EVTA about the voice in ways that were artistic, scientific, anatomic, acoustic and groundbreaking.

This is a quote from the end of a poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins  The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo that she read so passionately in Copenhagen:

“A care kept.-Where kept? do but tell us where kept, where.-

Yonder.- What high as that! We follow, now we follow.- Yonder, yes

    yonder, yonder,

Yonder.”

We will miss her greatly!

Susan Yarnall-Monks President EVTA