ROCK STAR VOICE COACH
Elizabeth Sabine passes away at 93
Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA — Vocal teacher Elizabeth Sabine died Monday, December 7th, 2014 at the age of 93. She was considered the queen of scream, having taught many of the 80s rockers who screamed their brains out on the Sunset Strip.
Sabine was raised in Australia and spent much of her early years in the field of entertainment. Her singing career also frequently saw her appear on Australian television in the In Melbourne Tonight Show.
In 1974, she moved to Los Angeles where she soon befriended Robert Mazzarella, a local singing teacher and operatic tenor. She was intrigued by his approach to voice strengthening and began to adopt the technique. At the end of the 1970s, Elizabeth found she was able to refine the technique and successfully strengthen the voices of hard rock and heavy metal music vocalists who often sung with vigorous screams and yells. Her technique also enabled the singer to master their voice swiftly in comparison to the older methods available. Some very famous voices of our time have sought Elizabeth out for training to better their on stage performance as a people magazine article points out which describes Elizabeth Sabine as the Heavy Metal Grandma with students such as Axl Rose, singer of Guns_N’_Roses and front man Dave Mustaine, founding member of Megadeth.
Lee Strasberg of the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute of Los Angeles, enlisted Elizabeth in 1981 to strengthen the voices of his acting and singing students which she has done for many years since.
Her website contains images of herself with a small sample of former students including Cypress Hill’s B-Real, Seinfeld’s Cosmo Kramer, Keel vocalist Ron Keel, Australian music export Men at Work’s Colin Hay, actor Christopher Reeve just to name a few.
Sabine’s bio is noted below:
Elizabeth Sabine, once dubbed the “Auntie Mame Of Heavy Metal!” by NBC News, is known as a Voice Strengthening Specialist and is renowned for her work in restoring and strengthening the voices of hard rock and heavy metal singers. She has also assisted people in many other fields, such as schoolteachers, trial lawyers, auctioneers, actors, preachers, etc., who have vocal difficulties. Born in London in October 1923, Elizabeth and her family emigrated to Australia in 1924, settling in Sydney, New South Wales. After her father died in 1932, Elizabeth helped her mother create exquisite flowers made from feathers, which were then sold to the milliners (hat shops). Elizabeth left school at 14 years of age to work and help with family finances. In time she took up singing and acting, working overtime to pay for her own tuition at the Conservatorium of Music. During the Second World War, Elizabeth was a member of a “concert party,” entertaining troops and doing charity work, and gaining a great deal of experience in stage craft. After the war, she took up modeling for a period of time then toured Australia and New Zealand with several musical shows, including “Brigadoon” and “Song of Norway.” She also toured and performed with the singer, Helen Reddy and her parents in their variety shows. In 1950 Elizabeth married and had three sons, giving up her career at that time to raise a family. Unfortunately, eight years later, meningi¬tis took the life of her middle son who was just twenty-two months old. Elizabeth’s husband never quite recovered from this loss and died two years later at the age of 49 from a heart attack. They had been married ten years. Forced to now become the breadwinner, Elizabeth returned to her singing profession and began performing in the local nightclubs. She also did several TV commercials, and later became a regular singer on the “In Melbourne Tonight” show. This led to a job on the Sitmar Shipping Line as a Cruise Director for special cruises, and between singing engagements, Elizabeth held this position for a period of three years. In 1964 Elizabeth sold her house and took her two sons to England, where she toughened up her act by singing in the “Working Men’s” Clubs.” Eventually she gave this up in order to run a boarding house in the country and spend time with her sons. In 1974, after her sons left home, she had an offer to go to America to start a new life, so at 51 years of age, with nothing more than two suitcases and a return plane ticket, she arrived in Los Angeles. The “new life” soon came in the form of a meeting with the operatic tenor-cum-physicist Robert Mazzarella. Elizabeth was intrigued with his revolutionary con¬cept of voice strengthening and ultimately ended up becoming his protégé. By the late 70’s, Elizabeth realized there was a great need for a tech¬nique to rebuild the ravished voices of rock singers who were coming to her for help. She discovered there were many rock performers singing successfully with no apparent damage to their voices, and after much research realized it was because they were singing with the uninhibited, passionate cries of a child. Following this pattern, and with the streamlining of certain exercises, Elizabeth was soon successfully strengthening the voices for the rigorous screams and yells of hard rock and heavy metal music. But it’s not only rockers who come to her for help. Actors, actresses and even businessmen have called on Elizabeth to learn how to strengthen their voices and be more assertive. In 1981, Lee Strasberg of the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles, thought enough of Elizabeth’s radical methods to engage her at his studios to strengthen the voices of his acting and singing students.SINGING,” at the Learning Tree Universities, the Learning Annex and several other top institutions.
