Curriculum Vitae

Reinette was born and grew up in the Piet Retief district of the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa in a home environment in which music formed part of everyday life. The daughter of a minister of religion, she used to sing while accompanying her family on the piano and was imbued with a love for music. At the age of seven she began taking piano lessons and by the age of 13 she had reached such a level of accomplishment that the task of providing accompaniment for the Piet Retief Primary School's operetta fell on her shoulders.

Having matriculated at Ermelo High School, Reinette pursued her musical studies at the University of Stellenbosch where she received singing lessons from the famous SA diva, Nellie du Toit. After acquiring the degree B.Mus., she taught music at school for four years. Well-known SA baritone, the late George Fourie, rediscovered her voice in 1991. After a year of tutoring with him, she won several awards at the Pretoria Arts Festival, adjudicated by Mimi Coertze.

Subsequent to George Fourie's tragic death Reinette continued her singing studies under Bets Botha, an accomplished opera singer and voice coach. During this time she appeared in several concerts at the Tauromenium Studio in Pretoria and remains a popular artist, often assisting welfare organisations in their fundraising drives. Having excelled at the Italian Bel Canto style of singing, Reinette's voice reached new levels of excellence thanks to her mastery of the renowned Feuchtinger Perfect Voice method.

As a member of Opera 2000, a Pretoria-based private company, she demonstrated her mastery of this delightful style of music in many of their concerts, performing extremely difficult Puccini, Rossini and Verdi arias. She also performed at the Secunda and Vereeniging theatres with Dr Eberhard Kunkel, (former PACOFS Opera Director and lecturer at Pretoria Technikon's Opera School) as artistic director and accompanist. Reinette received a meritorious scholarship from the International Voice Institute at the San Francisco Conservatoire, headed by well-known South African singer, Prof Hermann le Roux, and was awarded the Highest Artistic Diploma in Opera, with distinction.

During 2000 Reinette was invited to participate in the Seventh-Day-Adventists' Special Gospel Music Showcase – forming part of their worldwide General Conference on Global Evangelism. This event took place in the Sky Dome in Toronto, Canada, with an audience of 60 000. Adjudged to be one of the top performers, she was subsequently invited to perform in the John W Bassett Theatre.

Since then, Reinette's life and aspirations have changed from opera to the gospel scene, while making excellent use of her training in the classical field. She has recently performed with well-known international evangelists and preachers such as Mark Finley, David Ascherick, Jay Gillimore and Steven Bohr from the United States, as well as with John Carter from Australia.

In so doing, she is fulfilling her dream and lifelong desire of becoming a singer for the Kingdom of Christ, moving souls to choose Eternal Life.

Testimonial

After thirteen years of intensive singing tuition, a professional singing career as a performing artist and having been a singing-tutor myself, I lost my voice.....!

My life, built around singing, fell apart. At that stage, nobody at all was able to assist me by explaining why I had suddenly developed an embarrassingly awkward, scratchy voice.

All attempts by singing mentors and treatment by various medical specialists brought no improvement. Consequently, my higher ranges became very thin and uncomfortable. I was devastated – I found myself being unable to sing the simplest melody.

My entire being called out to God and my prayer went thus: "Father, You gave me a voice to speak and sing. Surely, You know how the voice works? Physicians and surgeons know how the eye, the heart and the brain functions. Please send me someone who understands how the voice works. Someone who will know how to remove the scratchiness from my voice."

At that stage, I had come to realise that during all the time I had been attending singing lessons and teaching students, my knowledge was based solely on guesswork. The lessons I received and taught were based mainly on the teaching of symptomatic effects as well as attempting to bring forth unnatural, artificial sound without scientific understanding of the long-term effects on the vocal mechanism.

Both singers and tutors often find themselves at a loss for a valid explanation as to why the vocal quality in one lesson would be totally "incorrect" but then "correct" in the next – according to the teacher. Students' voices as well as their characters are often subject to a teacher's moods. In many cases one would hear that despite five to ten years of attending classes religiously and practising scales and lip-rolls, etc., students had still not learnt or did not understand correct vocal action. Consequently, they are doomed to remain nothing more than true disciples – dependent on the teacher for years to come.

Well, God heard my prayer. It was answered through a man by the name of Jaco Pieterse. Jaco had personally studied under Dr Eugene Feuchtinger, a physician and scientist who in the early and mid-twentieth century had made major breakthroughs in the field of vocal development – enormously benefiting many (70 000+) singers as well as public speakers. For me, Jaco's explanation of the famous Perfect Voice method as researched and developed by the Feuchtinger family was a real eye-opener.

He instructed me to inspect the inside of my oral cavity in a mirror, by torchlight, in order to determine the precise position of my tongue and soft-palate. To my surprise, this inspection revealed that my larynx was dangerously elevated. I had never realised that I had a "tongue within a tongue" – the key to one's singing success or failure. Jaco set about demonstrating and explaining to me, in scientific and medical terminology, the functioning and excellent results achieved through perfect vocal action. Subsequently, I was introduced to Feuchtinger's famous "Three Silent Exercises."

Does this sound too good to be true? After three generations and 40 years of the Feuchtinger Family's scientific research to perfect and simplify the Perfect Voice method, I can confirm from personal experience that this is the only – yes, the only – method that really works!!

I got my voice back, stronger and better than it had been before the loss of my voice compelled me to embark on this whole exercise. I now find it possible to implement perfect vocal action with each individual note. As a result, I have gained greater volume, sound variety and range with the greatest of ease. This is available to anyone since it is based on physiologically manipulated mechanics, of which control of the hyoglossus muscle is the starting point....!

A year spent in practising and implementing the Perfect Voice method empowered me to sing "La Traviata" and the aria "Czardas" from "Die Fledermaus" even better than ever before. Owing to the fact that my natural vocal action had replaced the symptomatic and artificially fabricated voice, gospel as well as lighter music such as pop was no longer a challenge to me.

We are currently teaching a broad spectrum of students, some of whom are opera students, band, rock and pop singers as well as cabaret and gospel performers. The Perfect Voice method is the answer for any type of voice, including those suffering from speech impediments such as lisping or stuttering. It has proven to be the solution for individuals struggling with conditions such as sleep apnoea and asthma, owing to its ability to strengthen and tone weak tongue and palate muscles that compromise breathing and give rise to such problems.

I recently had the privilege of appointing one of my students, Heather Marti – a brilliant drama as well as a certified Alexander Technique teacher – to assist the Perfect Voice Institute in helping students to integrate the Alexander and Perfect Voice methods. The Institute has a single goal – to teach voices to become exceptional voices. Throughout his lifetime Dr Feuchtinger maintained that a good voice is the birthright of every individual.