Benson's first book now available

Published: July 28, 2020

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Elizabeth Ann Benson, associate professor and music theatre singing specialist for the Department of Theatre, recently published her first book, "Training Contemporary Commercial Singers." Benson interviewed 26 expert contemporary commercial music, or CCM, pedagogues working with leading CCM and musical theatre singers around the world, incorporating established teaching methodologies, including Speech Level Singing, Somatic Voicework, The LoVetri Method and Lisa Popeil’s Voiceworks, as well as eclectic and independent pedagogical approaches.

“The book is about how to teach nonclassical singing called CCM singing. There are many books on classical vocal pedagogy, but very few on CCM voice pedagogy," Benson said. "Since this is what I teach every day at Auburn (applied voice for music theatre majors), I wanted to find out what the top pedagogues in the field were doing in their own teaching studios. I then organized the book by topic to see how each teacher approaches the same topic. This revealed fascinating trends and preferences, as well as a multitude of different approaches. It is the first book to examine the field of CCM voice pedagogy as a whole, in such detail.” 

Benson said she was able to conduct the research and finish writing most of the book during her semester leave from teaching, which she was awarded by the College of Liberal Arts.

“That time was critical to the success of the project and necessary to achieve the increased visibility of Auburn University in the field of CCM voice pedagogy,” Benson said. "Since I have been promoting the book on social media and within professional organizations, I have already heard from people reading "Teaching Contemporary Commercial Singing" in Hong Kong, Australia, the U.K., South Africa, Brazil, Canada and all over the United States."

The book cover features current musical theatre major Ebony Strong with lighting designed by Auburn theatre alum Trevor Turner, and the photo taken by another theatre alum, Jessi Rogers.

The book was published by Compton (Oxford, U.K.) and is available here

Submitted by: Vicky Santos