Interview with Cindy Hansen

Following is a transcript (edited just a bit) of a great conversation I had with Cindy Hansen, a popular full-time professional performance coach.  She gets great reviews as you can see from her entry in the coach directory.  I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Tom: How long have you been working with performers, and how did you get started?

Cindy: 30 years.  3rd generation barbershop brat – my grandfather started a chorus in Michigan and my father was in quartets and my uncles all sang.  When we had family gatherings it was barbershopping.

Tom: How much do you coach?

Cindy: I’m coaching full time.  I quit my job 11 years ago. I’ve been lucky to be one of the few who can make an OK living at it.  Not as much as I made in the corporate world, but enough.

Two years ago I was on the road for 307 days.  Then I got married and I wanted to be home a bit more.  About 200 days last year, and probably about 200 this year.  I can be as busy as I want; I’m turning stuff down all the time.

Tom: What’s your specialty as a coach?

Cindy: It’s changed over the last few years, as the venues that I coach in have changed.  I not only coach SAI and Barbershop but also some gospel and a cappella groups as well.   If I’m doing choruses, helping them to develop show packages and entertainment is what I like most. I can choreograph and have done that a lot but I don’t consider myself a dancer, per se.  Working with quartets, I prefer to help them develop their personality, because once they know who they are, the visual plan is very easy to apply and that makes the whole process very simple.

I think if you look at quartets who are successful, they know who they are, what they’re good at, and how they interact with an audience.  Quartets need help finding that.   Sometimes being inside it you’re a little too close.  Sometimes it helps to take all four personalities and help guide them by asking questions.  I ask more questions than anything, because they know their answers – we just have to get it out of them.

Tom: What do you think it is that makes you a person who gets great reviews and is a successful coach?

Cindy: I attribute a lot of that to my Masters degree in social work, believe it or not, because one of the things I can do is talk to a group and get them to believe in things they can be successful at.  My background in social work helps me get them to believe in themselves.  I think believing in yourself is the biggest hurdle to get over.  I’m not trying to get people to be arrogant or cocky or anything like that, but if you’ve got a product that’s good to sell and you know that, if you have a desire to go out and share that, it becomes very successful with the audience.  So I think getting people to believe in who they are, putting them in a position where they trust that what they’re doing in front of an audience is going to be successful, and also, feeling comfortable about the visual package that they have, which goes back to what kind of group they are.

Realtime is a perfect example of that – you don’t have planned moves, you have theatrical designs with concepts, and then each guy gets to be successful at what he would be comfortable doing on the stage inside that concept.  There are others that are great at the theatrical side of performance, and then there are groups that are good at precision moves like Metropolis.  They do planned moves at certain times and that works for them, because they know that everyone is going to do it, they trust everyone is going to do it.  But they’re not always as successful at going off on their own to sell a song individually.   Some groups love subtle because they want to be easy and let the music to be the primary focus, others want to cover up some of their singing and do it with very flamboyant moves that distract a little from their singing, because there are groups that are very entertaining who don’t sing that well.

Tom: How do you help a group to believe in themselves?

Cindy: First of all, reminding them of what they’re successful at doing – where do they get standing ovations, what gets them the longest applause, what things are requested time and time again for them to repeat, and what is it about those things that you think the audience wants.  Some if it may be interactive with an audience, some of it may be comedic or novelty, just something out of the ordinary.    Others may be ballads that tug at the heartstrings because they have individuals that are great at crawling inside of a song.  Looking at past things that they’ve done, what they feel most comfortable singing.  Why they spend more time rehearsing some songs than others.

An example most recently was Power Play’s show package.  When they won their gold medal, I said they should only take songs they loved to do on stage.  They could not take songs that somebody told them they had to do, or because it was an arrangement that was going to score well, or to please an arranger, but only songs they loved to sing.  So they went and sang Love At Home, Singing With My Dad - all songs that fit with who Power Play is personality-wise.

Tom: Clearly you’ve been able to help a lot of groups do some wonderful things, so the way you think about it/ approach it is a very powerful approach.  What are some of the most important insights you can offer?

Cindy: Just like any person who is responsible in a chorus or quartet, you have to live with the music.  I listen to each song hundreds of times so I start to feel the music inside my soul vs. just looking at a piece of sheet music.  I like to talk to directors about where their dynamic changes are, what the style of the music is, so that they can understand key elements that make that music come to life.  When someone comes to me for coaching, I probably listen to the song 150 to 200 times before I ever get in front of anybody to coach it.

I ask the director, where are you having problems?  And if they say “I want them to sing softer here but they keep singing it louder”, maybe I can develop physical moves that will help the director achieve that result, and make that music come to life.

Tom: I feel that most of the singers that I see are better than they think they are, that they’re really getting in their own way, and I have a suspicion that when you go in and work on that visual plan it takes their mind off all the technical things that were getting in the way of their singing.

Cindy: Funny you should say that because Jim Casey and I did a workshop together and we realized that we were going after the same thing in different ways, Jim through vocal technique and myself through emotion and style and character.  So no matter what side of the river you’re living on, the musical side or the visual side, you should be getting the same message.   And as we tag-teamed on that weekend retreat, the chorus was continuing to get the same information just in lots of different ways.

Tom: What would you call the “thing” you were both working on?

Cindy: Good question!  For me it’s the impact on the audience.  When you stylize or sing a chord that rings, there’s an impact on the audience, and when you get emotionally behind it there’s an impact on the audience.  Whether that is soft and tender or exciting and passionate and powerful and makes your heart beat a little faster.   We’re going after the same things in terms of how the audience is going to experience your performance.

Tom: Thanks for chatting today Cindy!  Is there anything you ‘d like to talk about that I haven’t asked

Cindy: I think if you realize that when you’re coaching you are an employee and you are there to make someone else successful, that your coaching takes a whole different focus.  I have become successful not because of what I do, but by getting the groups to do what they do better.  If the focus is totally on their success and how they impact an audience, then you can’t fail, and I try to keep that very clear in my heart.