Research Unit staff

• Associate Professor Michael Halliwell
• Dr James Wierzbicki
• Dr Helen Mitchell
• Susie Walsh

For information about the academic staff at SCM please refer to the webpage for each Unit.

Associate Professor Michael Halliwell

Acting Associate Dean (Research)

Associate Professor Michael Halliwell

Michael Halliwell is the principal baritone of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Literature and Opera are his twin passions and his academic expertise includes the adaptation of literature into opera. He is currently working on a book on the adaptation of drama into contemporary opera. He lectures in vocal studies and opera and is an expert on the operatic adaptation of the plays of Shakespeare.

Recent publications include a double CD of songs from the Boer War with David Miller, When the Empire Calls, released by ABC Classics in 2005. His book Opera and the Novel: The Case of Henry James, was published by Rodopi in 2005.

Born in South Africa, Halliwell studied music and literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. While still a student, he was awarded two scholarships to study at the London Opera Centre and with Otakar Kraus, as well as with Tito Gobbi in Florence. He went on to become principal baritone with the Netherlands Opera; Hamburg State Opera; Nürnberg Opera. While in Europe he sang over 50 major roles in many leading European Opera houses working with many of the most prominent conductors and directors. More recently, he has presented masterclasses and concerts in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Taipei and Cape Town. He has also made numerous recordings including a CD of Kipling settings, Soldier, Soldier, with David Miller (Artworks, 2001).

Awarded his Ph.D in 1995 for his study of the adaptation of fiction into contemporary opera, Halliwell joined the Conservatorium as Lecturer in Vocal and Opera Studies in 1996. From 2000-2004 he was chair of Vocal and Opera Studies, and from 2004-2006 he was Pro-Dean and Head of School. He has given papers on music and literature at many international conferences in Australia, South Africa, the United States, Britain, Germany and Austria, and has published widely. He recently gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare and Opera at Cambridge University.

Dr James Wierzbicki

Director of HDR Admissions and Progression

Dr James Wierzbicki

Previously on the musicology staffs of the University of Michigan and the University of California-Irvine, and for more than twenty years chief classical music critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other large American newspapers, James Wierzbicki currently focuses on twentieth-century music in general and film music in particular. Along with a monograph on the electronic score for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (Scarecrow Press, 2005) and Film Music: A History (Routledge, 2009), his recent publications include articles in Beethoven Forum, Music and the Moving Image, Opera Quarterly, Screen Sound, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and Musical Quarterly.

Dr Helen Mitchell

Lecturer

Dr Helen Mitchell

Helen Mitchell has a multidisciplinary background in music, as a singer, music scholar and music performance researcher and her research is situated at the intersection between music practice and scientific discovery. She graduated in music from the University of Oxford in 2000 and moved to Sydney to undertake doctoral studies at the Conservatorium of Music in 2001. From 2004-5, Helen was Dean of Students at The Women’s College within the University of Sydney.

Listeners’ perception of sound quality is central to Helen’s music performance research. Her PhD research defined and examined a major pedagogic singing technique, the “open throat”, by matching expert pedagogues’ descriptions and perceptions of sound quality to established acoustic measures of voices. A series of studies confirmed that listeners were the most effective and reliable assessors of sound quality but also suggested that current acoustic methods were limited in defining vocal quality.

From 2005, Helen was Australian Postdoctoral Fellow in an ARC funded study and conducted a longitudinal study of music training, tracking singers through the duration of a tertiary degree and mapped perceptual and acoustic changes in their vocal quality to their acquisition of technical mastery.

Her current work investigates how listeners recognise and describe the sound quality of music performers. She has developed novel exploratory studies of verbal overshadowing in the music domain to extend our understanding of the value and limitations of verbal descriptors to describe and remember a music performer. Preliminary results confirmed that the act of verbal description, or putting a sound “into words”, is not only essentially uninformative, but actually distorts listeners’ memory and subsequent recall of the original performance or performer.

At SCM, she co-convenes postgraduate Research Methods course with Professor Howard and takes graduate seminars in empirical music studies and research ethics. She also supervises Masters, DMA and PhD students in their research projects in music performance. Helen is also Co-Editor of Australian Voice.

Selected publications:

1. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T. (2010). Change in vibrato rate and extent during tertiary training in classical singing students. Journal of Voice, 24(4), 427-434.
2. Mitchell, H. F., Kenny, D. T. & Ryan, M. (2010) Perceived improvement in vocal performance following tertiary-level classical vocal training: do listeners hear systematic progress? Musicae Scientiae XIV(1), 73-93.
3. Mitchell, H.F., & MacDonald, R.A.R. (2009) Linguistic limitations of describing sound quality: Is talking about music like dancing about architecture? In A. Williamon, S. Pretty & R. Buck (Eds.) Proceedings of the International Symposium on Performance Science (ISPS09), (pp. 45-50). The Netherlands: European Association of Conservatoires (AEC).
4. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T. (2008b). The tertiary singing audition: perceptual and acoustic differences between successful and unsuccessful candidates. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, 2(1&2), 95-110.
5. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T. (2008a). Open throat: acoustic and perceptual support for pedagogic practice. Journal of Singing, 64(1), 429-441.
6. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T., (2006). Can experts identify “open throat” technique as a perceptual phenomenon? Musicae Scientiae X(1), 33-58.
7. Kenny, D. T. & Mitchell, H. F., (2006). Acoustic and perceptual appraisal of vocal gestures in the female classical voice Journal of Voice 20(1), 55-70.
8. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T. (2004b). The impact of “open throat” technique on vibrato rate, extent and onset in classical singing. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology 29(4), 171-182.
9. Mitchell, H. F., & Kenny, D. T. (2004a). The effects of “open throat” technique on long term average spectra (LTAS) of female classical voice. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 29(3), 99-118.
10. Mitchell, H. F., Kenny, D. T., Ryan, M., & Davis, P. J. (2003). Defining open throat through content analysis of experts' pedagogical practices. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 28(4), 167-180.

Susie Walsh

Research Services Officer

As Research Services Officer, Susie Walsh is responsible for providing grants/contracts administration support to the Conservatorium’s research community for the entire life-cycle of the research funding process.

Susie has an active interest in the visual and performing arts, with a particular focus on the medium of film. Currently a PhD Candidate at the College of Fine Arts (UNSW), her thesis topic explores ‘A War of Words: Voice-Over in the American War Film’. Having achieved her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours Class 1) in 2000, her current research and teaching covers disciplines such as Film History and Theory (Film Sound – Voice Music and Sound Effects); (Genre Studies – War Films, Musicals, Experimental and Arts Films); Creative Works and Curatorial Practices (Film, Video, Sound, Performance and Installation); Art History and Theory (Modern to Post-modern), (Art and Technology); Qualitative and Quantitative Methods for Performing and Visual Arts; and Audio and Visual Methodologies, and Performance Practice as Research.

Selected publications:

1. Warrior Worriers and Babbling Battlers: Representations of Combat Trauma in the American War Film. Conference Paper (Peer Reviewed), XIV Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, University of Otago, 27 – 30 November 2008
2. Friendly Fire: Epistolary Voice-Over in Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line. Journal Article (Peer reviewed), Literature Film Quarterly, 33:4, October 2005, pp. 306 – 312
3. Speaking Out Of Line: Voice-Over in War Films. Conference Paper (Peer reviewed), War in Film, Television and History, Film and History League & The Literature Film Association 3rd Biennial Conference, 11 – 14 November 2004, Texas, USA
4. Foreign Correspondents: Female Epistolary Voice-Over in War Films. Conference Paper (Peer reviewed), Sounding Out 2, Midlands Sound Research Group 2nd International Conference, 8 – 10 July 2004, Nottingham University, UK
5. The Efficacy of Voice-Over in Representing Truth, Guilt and Self-Identity in War Films. Conference Paper, Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, 11th Biennial Conference, 28 Nov – 1 Dec 2002, Flinders University, Australia.