Jo Estill

Jo Estill, now in her eighties, remains active as a voice researcher. Her career started as a concert singer when she won several competitions that took her on a tour of many European cities. Throughout her early career Jo was never satisfied with her own singing in spite of great reviews and success. She felt that all the teaching she had received had never explained to her how she should use her voice or how her voice worked.

When Jo was in her forties she decided to continue her education and she went back to university to study anatomy, physiology, acoustics and clinical voice therapy. It was during her time at university that Jo began to create the Estill Voice Model. As she gained more and more insight into the possibilities of the voice she began researching together with some of the leading doctors and acousticians in the USA. That led to a canon of research that today forms the foundations of the Estill Voice Model and, through its application to teaching, Estill Voice Training.

In the late seventies Jo was invited to teach in Japan. In preparing for her work in Japan she wrote compiled the exercises that had developed from her research into a written format which we now know as The Shiki Papers.

During the eighties the system continued to develop and the results were The Compulsory Figures and Six Voice Qualities. Today these have become Level One: Figures for Voice™ and Level Two: Figure Combinations for Six Voice Qualities™.

Estill Voice Training has continued to evolve and be revised as new research results have become available. In 2004 the Figures were reorganised, new teaching material was developed and amongst other things a computer program for spectrographic voice analysis released.

In the spring of 2004, Jo Estill began to consider retiring and she passed the control and development of the Estill Voice Model and Estill Voice Training to three Certified Course Instructors who had trained directly with her. These three Certified Course Instructors, Kerrie Obert, Mary McKlimek and Kim Steinhauer, set up the company Vocal Innovations, LLC and through this company they continue the work of Jo Estill.

Today Estill Voice Training is taught across the world and there is now Certified Course Instructors and Certified Master Teachers in many countries. Some of these Certified Course Instructors also have Testing Privileges that allows them to train new educators. In many colleges, universities and performing arts academies in the USA and Europe students now learn Figures for Voice™ as part of their curriculum. At the Royal Academy of Music in London Estill Voice Training is the foundation for the Musical Theatre course. In Australia the system is used in many educational institutions and at the conservatoire in Caracas in Venezuela the students are also taught Estill Voice Training.