Archive highlight, originally released in 2023: Renée Yoxon is a trans non-binary singer, songwriter, jazz musician, and trans voice teacher.

Renee shares some beautiful and inspiring performances from their albums, as well as stories from life as a disabled person and how their disability and chronic pain has guided the direction of their career. We talk about their musical development, and their experiences both bad and good as they navigated their musical education (after finishing a degree in physics!). Renée explains the kind of work they do with trans vocal exploration and we dive into all kinds of topics in the usual tangential style of this series.

The transcript and video are linked here on my website

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photo: Laurence Philomène

podcast theme music: Nick Kold

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro

(00:01:21) Renée’s physics degree, start in school band, Jazz Works camp

(00:04:19) free improv group, intergenerational friendships

(00:06:38) intro to “Willow Weep for Me” by Ann Ronell

(00:08:53) “Willow Weep for Me” with René Gely

(00:13:57) piano, ukulele

(00:15:26) “Beautiful Alchemy”, film with Teagan Lance and album

(00:17:14) “Terrible Alchemy”

(00:23:19) Blossom Dearie

(00:23:52) worldless improv

(00:24:37) studies in New York, living as a disabled person, vocal technique

(00:29:33) singing in rock band “Gorgeous George”, care of the voice and endurance training

(00:32:20) trans voice aleration, TikTok success, pitch lowering, taking risks and learning to be silly

(00:40:14) gender presentation and gender identity

(00:42:35) ways we can alter the voice

(00:45:09) different languages in terms of vocal alteration, vocal fry and gendered cutural coding for vocal characteristics

(00:47:52) TikTok

(00:49:22) teaching Trans Voice Alteration to other teachers

(00:51:45) the importance of teaching business skills to musicians, University of Limerick, Edel Meade

(00:55:58) Banff, McGill, growing up in Ottawa, the importance of mentors, Mark Ferguson, René Gely

(01:00:29) social anxiety, speaking in public with a different voice or new language

(01:02:38) different people who take Renée’s courses on voice alteration

(01:03:18) songwriting, Aoife McAtamney Pink Breath

(01:04:27) “Drinking Coffee”

(01:08:58) songs “The Bad Years” about their chronic illness

(01:10:27) Kazaa music sharing, learning jazz repertoire

(01:12:53) Renée’s perspective on the music industry as a disabled person, and experiences at McGill university with lack of accessibility

(01:17:46) Mx non-binary honorific, the importance of pronouns

(01:20:32) disability rights, more about their McGill experience

(01:22:45) Montreal