If it’s something you think you love, you have to stay committed and do it all the time. Truly dedicate your mind and your lifestyle to it.”

Helena Widmann

The first thing that struck me about Helena Widmann was her voice. Direct, balanced and pleasing to the ear, it smothers the listener with warmth and clarity. Many who speak professionally often sound over-the-top polished and unnatural, but when Widmann speaks, she produces an ambience that feels organic, calming and holistic.

Widmann, a life-long Rhode Island resident, is a voice teacher, singer, musician and student, who juggles these endeavors with great care and exactitude. However, to Widmann, not one of these efforts is more important than the other, for they are all part and parcel of a greater aspiration. That aspiration preoccupies her mind, body and soul: The nurturing and coaching of voice students to help them reach a heightened state of bliss, healing and communication.

Recently I sat down with Widmann for an hour-long interview. I found her to be intelligent, sensitive and benevolent. She spoke of her love for tutoring voice students, how she mimicked opera at 3 years old, and how it felt to sing standing directly above Johan Sebastian Bach’s burial site.

I wondered if she came from a musical family

“I do have people in the family who are musical. My mom likes to sing. She is into ’70s punk rock, and my uncle plays guitar and sings,” said Widmann. “My dad always liked rock music and he’d play the Allman Brothers, Crosby Stills and Nash, all that kind of stuff. I loved being in the car when I was a kid listening to my parents’ music for sure. They influenced me a lot because they had strong tastes in music.”

What is your first memory of music?

“I remember singing along with my neighbor’s soundtrack to Madam Butterfly. She would play it really loudly in her backyard when she was cleaning her house on Sundays,” said Widmann. “She would just blast opera, and I could hear it from my backyard so I would sing along with it when I was playing outside. I must’ve been three or four years old. I liked what I heard, and I would copy it because I guess I could discern it. I was very young but, somehow, I was able to mimic it.”

When Widmann was five years old her mom asked her if she wanted to join a theater group for young people. She said yes and her mother signed her up. But her mother may have had an ulterior motive. Widmann laughed, when she reminisced, telling me that she thought her mom, “was in need of a couple of weeks without having to hire a babysitter.”

“It was the Rhode Island Youth Theater, which I was in from 5 years old until I got into high school. I would be involved in a play once or twice a year. ‘Oliver,’ ‘Annie,’ ‘The Sound of Music.’

“Sometimes I had a part, sometimes I was in ensemble, but I always enjoyed the process of finding out about the show and getting to know the songs and the characters.”

Were you thinking at an early age that you might want to make singing a career?

“I mean, I just liked it. I remember having a music class starting in around the third grade and we had chorus. I would do auditions for solos and I really enjoyed the whole thing. These classes were an opportunity for me to keep singing.

“By high school, I knew that I wanted to make singing a focal point of my life, but I really didn’t know how to go about it. I did take some piano lessons and guitar lessons. I never thought about being a doctor or a lawyer or any of that. I enjoyed singing. I always looked for ways to do it in school and outside of school if I could. I was very daydreamy, so I don’t think I was focused on anything but creative outlets during that time.”

After high school Widmann aspired to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. As she put it, other than wanting to study music for the singing voice her study goals were “somewhat vague.” She applied and was accepted.

“I commuted to Berklee, so I wasn’t fully immersed as I would have liked to have been, but it was great. I met musicians, singers and artists from all over the world. Such hard-working, talented people, and I was very inspired by that experience,” said Widmann. “It felt like a community, and I learned a lot.

“My voice teacher at Berklee taught me some wonderful vocal techniques, and through some work with her it was the first time I felt that I was belting comfortably. I studied ear training harmony and also some conducting. While only scratching the surface of conducting I learned the basics of keeping time with an orchestra. To this day, when I hear music, I have a habit of hearing the conducting of it.”

Widmann was unable to declare a degree at Berklee, for sadly, her financial situation at the time prevented her from continuing to afford tuition at the acclaimed music college.

A little lost

“After Berklee I was a lost puppy. I felt uncertain about things. I dropped out because I couldn’t afford to go back,” said Widmann. “When you are in school for so long, you’re kind of still under the impression that you have training wheels for life. You have people telling you what to do and when to do things. And when you stop going to school abruptly, which is what I did, there are no more training wheels.

“At that point I really wasn’t sure what to do. I did some waitressing and other things. I said to myself, ‘ok, you love music, you love singing and you have some education,’ so I decided, somehow, I would eventually go back to school.”

After a short “lull,” Widmann did return to college. She attended Rhode Island College, earning a bachelor’s degree in English. As fate would have it, her time at RIC presented a fortuitous, once in a lifetime musical prospect.

“I went back to college, (RIC), graduating with an English degree and minoring in music. I always enjoyed reading and writing and I figured that that degree would someday be good for me, but I was still pursuing music. While there, I was offered a wonderful opportunity to sing classical music abroad through the Rhode Island College Choir.”

Every other year RIC would take the choir to a foreign location and perform the music that they had been working on for the year. That particular year it was Germany and the Czech Republic, traveling to different cities across those two countries.

“We prepared for most of the year, and we ended up going with a chamber choir, a smaller version of the full choir. Multiple people couldn’t go for different personal reasons, so it ended up being a reduced size chamber choir of 20 people,” said Widmann. “We performed various classical pieces, including, Brahms’s Waru mist das Licht gegben?, in many small towns, in local churches and some larger cathedrals as well. But the most memorable was when we performed standing directly above the burial site of Johan Sebastian Bach within the sanctuary of St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) in Leipzig, Germany.”

I wondered how she felt performing at such a hallowed milieu.

“It was surreal standing above the tomb of an insanely famous composer, a massive cultural influence. It was a very exciting and humbling experience,” said Widmann. “I remember thinking at that moment that I wanted to sing my very best for that performance. I paid very close, particular attention, being extra focused. I wanted to do it justice.”

From student to performer and teacher

During and after RIC, Widmann hit the ground running, embarking on numerous ventures.

“At this particular time, I was all over the place, performing solo gigs, with an accompanist, and fronting the R&B band ‘Soul Babe’, with my musical comrade Mary Gipson,’’ said Widmann. “At the same time, I began giving private voice lessons and teaching voice at Salva Regina University.’’

“In private lessons I teach people how to sing and improve their singing technique or just to learn more about their own voice,” said Widmann. “I work with professional singers, hobbyists, teenagers and some young kids as well. Parents bring them in because they noticed that their children are interested in singing, and they want to explore the child’s interest.

“At Salve Regina, I am an adjunct professor of voice. I work with students who are in the degree program in the music and theater department. I have students who are specifically working towards a degree so they have specialized requirements in their programs,” said Widmann. “I assign pieces and they need to complete songs from different eras of music, depending on if they’re in musical theater or if they’re studying, for instance, western classical style. I help to make sure they’re on track with assignments that are geared towards understanding the music, not just a technique. So they work on the repertoire and eventually perform it, sometimes in front of an audience and sometimes just for adjudication, which is kind of like a final exam.”

Widmann says she has now cut back on her performing schedule to allow more time for teaching and a new venture on the horizon.

“I’m returning to grad school at URI this fall. They offer a speech pathology program there that I’ve been very interested in for years now. Some of my English classes from RIC are transferable and relevant. It’s a master’s degree in speech pathology. Speech pathology is a big umbrella. There’s a lot of different avenues you can go down. You can help people with communication disorders, which could be anything from voice disorders to articulation or helping people who are recovering from stroke or postoperative problems. Also, just communication in general, like public speaking.”

Widmann says she chose URI becuse she desires to stay in Rhode Island.

“URI’s program is excellent, and I want to stay local. I have an interest in remaining in the community and maintaining my life here in Rhode Island. I like that Rhode Island is densely populated. There are people around, it offers nature, it’s coastal. It’s not big/major city life like a concrete jungle yet it’s between Boston and New York. We have lots of great universities here doing great research. Not to mention the food and the culture.”

As our interview came to a close, I asked Widmann if she had any advice for people who aspire to be artists, singers and musicians?

“Do it every day. Every day you must live it. If it’s something that really interests you, and you think you love it, put the time in and your learning will compound. You have to stay committed and have to do it all the time. Truly dedicate your mind and your lifestyle to it.”

“If I say I’m a voice teacher but I don’t do my warm-ups, and I don’t live what I’m trying to teach, then how can two things be true?”

Look for Helena Widmann @  Instagram, YouTube and www.voicelessonsri.com

Michael Khouri is a Barrington resident writing occasionally about the Rhode Island music scene. Reach him at mkhouri@cox.net.