free your voice. live your song.

integrative, embodied voice coaching

with rhys tivey

As a singer, voice coach, actor, and music producer,

Rhys Tivey offers sustainable voice training techniques,

integrated with songwriting, song interpretation, qi gong, yoga, breathwork, movement, and improvisation,

to guide vocalists of any level toward discovering

deep confidence and pleasure

with their voice.

What would it feel like to

rediscover your own voice?

 

private lessons

VOICE BRAVE method -

cultivating love, confidence, authenticity, embodiment,

and wild creativity for your voice

via zoom, + in person availability between NYC and upstate NY

Are you new to studying voice, and are yearning to experience soulful vocal confidence?

Are you an experienced singer who wants greater freedom, fresh creativity, and renewed pleasure with your voice?

Are you wanting to create and dedicate a gift song to yourself or a loved one?

Are you an actor or speaker wanting to find stunning melodic and rhythmic potency in your speech?

Total beginners through intermediate and experienced singers, of all voice types and genres, are welcome.

Based off of your unique vocal journey, we can create a structure of voice work progress, based on continuity, vision, and consistency.

Sample Structure:

3 - 4 lessons a month for 4 months, incorporating basic themes of focus:

  • Month 1 - nourishing the foundation of body ease and breath energy, the inner voice roots and the outer voice blossoms

  • Month 2 - making a song your own

  • Month 3 - making your own song

Example goals:

  • cultivate more pleasure and freedom in your singing

  • write one original song, born from your unique and intuitive creativity, optionally as a dedicated gift song for your self or a loved one

  • discover new vocal confidence while focusing on one chosen song (or more depending on your unique learning approach)

  • deepen your awareness of your body’s subtle sensations, breath energy, and intuitive impulses as a foundation for singing

  • grow receptive to ‘hearing’ your unique inner voice of wisdom + poetry; grow confident in amplifying that inner voice through sound + music

  • create music magic in your own community, by sharing your voice with the people you love (like a private performance for friend(s) or family, a public performance, or a group sharing hangout). ie, think of 1 or more people in your life you would want to sing for after our lesson package finishes

  • clarify your own personalized language for your vocal growth (because you’re the truest authority on what success means to you)

Methods:

  • a rich array of voice building techniques that are research-based,

    cutting edge, and oriented to safety and sustainability

  • an emphasis on play, curiosity, exploration, experimentation,

    and discovery (over correctness or perfection)

  • personalized, custom tailored voice exercises based on your unique voice

  • crafted parameters for unlocking new possibilities of improvisation

  • qi gong + yoga influenced breath / body / movement awareness, rooted in curiosity and enjoyment

  • journaling prompts that enliven embodied imagination and grow a base of material for authentic songwriting

testimonials

from private lesson students, and group course participants

  • I like that Rhys is respectful of the initial seeds and creative process of each person. He inspires us to realize our personal goals. I also love that he offers the knowledge that comes from living his life and not only from his development of making art.

    Maybel Ovalles: Multidisciplinary Artist and Facilitator, Co-Founder of CAMP Zipolite

  • I love Rhys's permissiveness to make and learn from mistakes - often the pressure to perform for instructors hinders progress, but with Rhys, I don't feel weighed down by expectations. He helped me better understand how to access different areas of my vocal range. With these techniques, I was able to put pitch in the backseat while attending to the quality of voice -- which in turn improved my pitch. He uses a holistic approach to embodying the voice through breath, presence, and mindfulness that feels refreshing and engaging.

    Jordan M. Rapaport: Singer, Songwriter, Producer, and Multi-instrumentalist

  • I love and appreciate that Rhys creates a container of safety and trust, which allows for the experience to be playful and fun. I found an edge to my courage I hadn't yet explored, and I'm ecstatic I did. I can confidently say I am a more authentically expressed version of myself, and that's been a lifelong dream.

    Sarinea Meserkhani: Poet, Singer, Lifelong Animist-in-training

  • Rhys’s lessons are a playful and revelatory somatic experience! The techniques he teaches feel like a shortcut to opening up my voice. The lessons are structured but also adapted and responsive to my energy. I had a breakthrough realization about my embodied relationship to my voice at the end of our second lesson. Rhys’s perceptiveness, support, openness, patience, and playful approach made the experience so enjoyable. I recommend Rhys to anyone who wants to explore their voice and have a container to dive deep into their vocalization while also developing techniques to broaden and expand their singing, speaking, expressing.

    Kate Sullivan: Singer, Somatic Movement Practitioner, Architect

  • Rhys’s coaching style is fun and fulfilling. To me it was supreme. The group session was like having a conversation with old friends. I did not expect to get out as much as I did. I can celebrate the ability I did not know I had. It is a journey, an inspiration, an achievement, and most of all it is fun.

    Mara New: Actor, Producer, Dancer

  • Going into Voice Brave, I wasn't sure what my authentic voice sounded like. I had tried on so many voices throughout my life doing theater, musicals, playing characters. As a result of Voice Brave and Rhys's coaching, I feel like I now have a voice of my own.

    Kelci Greenway: Dancer, Choreographer, Theatre-maker

  • I enjoy the open receptivity Rhys provides. I’ve loved his personalized focus, honing in on unique elements of my voice, my breath, my throat. He pivoted what he shared with me, what tips and tricks he provided, based on the moment, what I was discovering, what was happening with my body. I've gained a better understanding of how my mind affects the production of sound. I loved the dynamic safe space in group sessions, sharing with such loving strangers, creating these special relationships in such short time.

    Sarah Sebastian: singer, songwriter, dancer, poet, performer

about

Rhys Tivey is a teacher (voice and yoga), and artist (singer, trumpeter, songwriter, music producer, and actor) based in NYC.

As a voice teacher and founder of Voice Brave, Rhys infuses research-based techniques for sustainable vocal growth with yoga, qi-gong, and holistic intuitive embodiment rooted movement, song interpretation, vocal improv and songwriting, offering both individual private lessons and group facilitation. He trained as a yoga teacher at Integral Yoga Institute NYC.

As a musician, he grew up in upstate New York playing jazz and orchestral trumpet, performing in Carnegie Hall, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic with Albany ESYO. After graduating from NYU for jazz trumpet, he dove into developing his sound as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer, taking inspiration from an eclectic mix of musical influence (Thom Yorke, Phil Collins, David Bowie, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Tribe Called Quest, and Miles Davis), while incorporating jazz and symphonic elements absorbed during his trumpet studies. After several years of performing in LA and NYC, Rhys joined grammy nominated engineer Mike Tierney, and mastering engineer Alex DeTurk (D'Angelo, David Bowie), to release his first album in 2020 mid-pandemic, entitled “Unsteady” ( rhystivey.com ). Much of the project was born from demos recorded in the few off hours working as a farm apprentice at Hawthorne Valley Farm, and completed at Mike Tierney's Shiny Things Studio in BedStuy Brooklyn, bridging rural and urban backdrops for it's songwriting and sonic essence. As a music producer, his most recent release with Ukrainian singer songwriter Kseniia, "100 words about the war", honors the Ukrainian war. 

As an actor / mover / performance artist, he collaborated with director Daniel Irizarry and writer Robert Lyons in “My Onliness” at the New Ohio Theater in NYC in 2021 and 2022, appearing as the character of "the Writer" (for which Theatre Mania calls him “an exhibitionist with a clarion voice”, in “The Most Singularly Insane Show In New York”). Also with Irizarry and Lyons, in summer of 2023, he acted, composed, and sang in the final performance of New Ohio Theater’s 30 year legacy, with “Ultra Left Violence”, with additional residency workshops at Mercury Store BK and North American Cultural Laboratory. In fall 2023, he acted in Marcel Dzama’s film “To Live On The Moon” through MOMA’s Performa NYC, with live performance infused screenings at Abron’s Arts. Beginning Spring 2023, Rhys performed as Oberon and Theseus in Neopolitical Cowgirl’s Midsummer Night's Dream at HERE Arts Center, with additional performances at Longhouse Reserve and LTV in Easthampton NY. He has also performed in underground Nie Theater of Berlin, as well in Phoebe Legere’s Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Reality Show at Theater for the New City. With performance art duo, Elk and Feather, he has performed at CREST Fest, Five Myles BK, and in residency at Signs and Symbols Art Gallery, and in March 2023 joined choreographer Natalie Deryn Johnson as resident composer and dancer at Keshet Dance’s Makers Space Residency in New Mexico.

listen - rhystivey.com

rhys’s teachers and selected sources of influence

Kristen Ruiz - research-based Vocal Pedagogy, voice training tools and techniques

Betty Buckley - song work, stage performance

Jonathan Angelilli - Qi Gong, Energy Medicine

Integral Yoga Institute - Yoga Teacher Training 200hr

Zahava Griss - polyvagal techniques for harmonizing the presence system, embodying archetypes, Waking The Heart of the Human Family; grief ritual; healing eros

Natalie Deryn Johnson - movement and embodiment energetics

Coco Karol - Qi Gong integrated movement improvisation

Resmaa Menakem - Somatic Abolitionism

Ben Lusher - singing, songwriting

UCB - Comedy Improv

MIMA Music - teaching group improvisation and songwriting

Greenville / Albany - Michael Benedict, Christine Wezgryn, Ed Coughtry, ESYO - Helen Cha Pyo, Eric Berlin, Kevin Hendricks, Eric Latini

NYU Steinhardt - BFA for Jazz Performance - Jean-Michel Pilc, Ralph Alessi, Brian Lynch, John Scofield, Wayne Krantz, Andy Milne

Bard College - Erica Lindsay, John Esposito

Carolyn Elliott Lovewell - Existential kink / Conflict Integration

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