PAS-Conference October 3-5, 2002

The Keynote

Short Biography                                                          

James Stark

James Stark was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. in 1938, into a rich musical environment. His Grade 5 school teacher wrote to his mother to predict that James would become a singer. She was right. James graduated from Roosevelt High School, where he was principal tenor in three choirs, and principal double bass player in an orchestra of 107 players. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in voice. His voice teacher was Roy Schuessler. While there, he was introduced to voice science by William Fletcher of the Bell Labs. He viewed his glottis for the first time, and viewed some of the films produced at the Bell Labs of the vibrating vocal folds. He then earned his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Musicology at the University of Toronto, focusing on the history of classical singing. He also studied with the Danish singer Aksel Schiøtz, and took Master Classes with Pierre Bernac.

He subsequently taught at the University of Colorado, the University of Western Ontario, and for the last 28 years at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. He has given many concerts and recitals, and has recorded his own compositions "Songs of Middle-Earth," in which he sings the Tolkien texts while accompanying himself on the harp. In the early 1970's he read some of Janwillem van den Berg's articles, and began a correspondence with van den Berg that led to his being invited to Groningen to carry out some measurements of subglottal pressures, with Ph.D. student Harm Schutte carrying out the procedures.

Subsequent to publishing an article on Manuel Garcia, he was again invited to Groningen, by Harm Schutte and Don Miller, to test his assertions. He made annual trips to Groningen beginning 1993, and in 1999 he published his major work Bel Canto: A History of Vocal pedagogy, which contains a lengthy Appendix on "The Groningen Protocols."