The Invisible Instrument: Preserving Our Voice in a Digital Age

The Invisible Instrument: Preserving Our Voice in a Digital Age
January 11, 2025 3:30 PM
Presented by David Adam Moore
About the Lecture

This Arts Talk explores the prehistory, evolution, and future of the singing voice. Drawing from his experience as a classical singer, voice researcher, and digital media artist, Moore makes a case for unamplified singing as one of the human body’s most exquisite capabilities—transcending mere music-making to serve as a vital connection to our humanity in an age increasingly defined by accelerating technology. The talk examines the biological and cultural evolution of the voice, the role it has played in the development of music and language, and the way in which vocal self-amplification techniques have been passed down through generations to form a living chain of knowledge that connects today’s Metropolitan Opera stars to our earliest ancestors calling across the savannah. These techniques have been vital for survival, fostering social bonds and transmitting emotional experiences across time and space. In the modern era, electronic amplification has given the voice unprecedented reach and creative potential, but it has also disconnected us from the unseen bond that is created between performer and listener as sound waves are physically transmitted from one body to another.

About David Adam Moore
Internationally recognized for his work as an operatic performer, director, digital media artist, and educator, David Adam Moore performs leading baritone roles for institutions including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Carnegie Hall, the Salzburg Festival, PBS, BBC, Arte TV, and Erato Records. Recent performances include a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Horatio in Brett Dean’s Hamlet, his Royal Opera Covent Garden debut as Col. Gomez in Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, the international debut of his multimedia presentation of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, and the title role in a new production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking for Hungarian State Opera, with scenic design taken from Moore’s documentary photographs of Angola prison. Alongside his artistic partner, director/designer Vita Tzykun, Moore is the artistic director of the NYC-based transmedia collective GLMMR, whose projects encompass a broad array of platforms including VR, immersive theater, large scale art installation, dance, and theatrical design. His work in stage direction, stage design, and installation/performance art has been presented by the Guggenheim Museum, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Diego Opera, Atlanta Opera, New Amsterdam Records, and National Sawdust. His projection design work has been featured in Lighting and Sound America Magazine, and his award-winning photography has been published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Boosey & Hawkes Music. A protégé of the influential voice pedagogue and author, Richard Miller (Structure of Singing, Training Tenor Voices), Moore served as Miller’s Principal Research Assistant at the Otto B. Schoepfle Vocal Arts Center at Oberlin Conservatory, where was honored as a McNair Scholar and National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences grant recipient. Moore currently serves on the faculty of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where he teaches Transmedia Storytelling and Voice, in addition to serving as Granada Artist-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at University of California – Davis. He has given lectures and masterclasses at Oberlin Conservatory, Mannes School of Music, University of Tel Aviv, Rice University Shepherd School of Music, San Diego State University, University of Texas, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill School of Music. He has served on the advisory boards of San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack and Austin Opera’s Innovation Council in collaboration with other thought leaders and technologists from major corporations and cultural institutions to find new paths forward from the intersection of historical arts and technology.

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