In the 31 years that Ken Bozeman, Frank C. Shattuck Professor of Music, has been teaching at Lawrence, he has seen a number of changes. “The Conservatory of Music has tripled in size, the voice faculty has doubled in size, and the student talent pool is much richer,” he said. Through this transformation, however, one thing has remained constant: Bozeman’s ability to be inspired by students working on all kinds of repertoire. “To be there when a student realizes that they just created beauty, and see how they feel about it, now that’s very motivating and satisfying.”
Of particular interest is research he is doing in acoustics and vocal registration. He studies how the “yawn” and the “swallow” muscles influence the position of the larynx in the neck and how they adjust for different segments of a singer’s range. Bozeman used an analogy that compares a singer’s range to an automobile transmission. “Different segments of the range are like different gears. In training a voice, we want a smooth transition between all of the registers, from the low end to the high end so a voice is free, even, and powerful. My job is to teach students how to be good ‘drivers’ of the voice and how to take care of it.” It is an athletic and aesthetic process that often takes years, he added, “but in the end results in beauty that seems effortlessly created.”
Bozeman was the recipient of the 1980 Young Teacher Award and the 1996 Excellence in Teaching Award. Even after more than three decades of teaching he is still excited by what his students can teach him — and that is one of the most rewarding experiences of all. Outside the classroom he serves as faculty advisor to the Lawrence Christian Fellowship, which allows him to explore the “big picture” with students. “I’m interested in helping them consider ‘why are we doing this? What’s going on here? What does singing do for — and contribute to — life?’”
View other faculty profiles from the president's annual report
