Carrie Hennessey grew up in the Midwest, where choral singing was a cultural staple. The youngest of eight children with a mom who taught piano, Hennessey was barely out of her teens when she burst onto the scene, having competed in the famed Metropolitan Opera auditions.
A traumatic experience early in her career would push Hennessey to take a hiatus from singing before eventually moving to Sacramento in 2008.
California’s capital city would prove a supportive community for Hennessey, and a fresh start to her singing career. She embraced a new approach to her singing with somatics, a physically informed process that connects voice, breath and emotions to a felt sense of the body.
Since then, Hennessey, a soprano, has sung all over the world and built a diverse career spanning opera, theater and education. She’s just recently completed a one woman show called “How Did I Even Get Here?” and is the co-founder of a company that provides experiential therapy based on somatics.
CapRadio Classical Host Jennifer Reason sat down with Hennessey to discuss the journey of finding her voice again and the new opportunities it has provided.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
On breaking her hiatus
Finding my voice again was another journey unto itself. Emerging in my 30s, I started taking care of myself in a way that didn’t have a name. Nobody was talking about trauma informed therapy in 2008 and nobody was talking about the somatic experience of the body. We were still in a lot of talk therapy and really the thing that I was working on was somatically experiencing my instrument. What does it feel like from the inside out to breathe? What does it feel like to make vibrations through my entire body?
On her one-woman show
A couple of years ago I started some creative coaching with a group called The Spark File. It’s these two women who have created this space where other massively creative humans are giving feedback and really building out a network of support. I entered the coaching thinking I wasn’t creative. I thought, “I’m always interpreting other people’s work so that means I’m not creative, I don’t have vision”. Through that process, I started revealing that I had a lot of stories that I needed to tell. So, I decided to just write my story. It has a format that feels like a cabaret, but it’s sort of a classical cabaret. What’s nice is that I’m able to customize it depending on for whom I’m performing. I was able to do this workshop in Sacramento and really focus on the influence and stories that Sacramento has to tell.
On her new business
The company is called SmashUp Somatics. I’m one of the co-facilitators and the other is Ellen Garavatti, a licensed psychotherapist whose interests lie in group work and experiential therapy. It’s based on the idea that healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum and if we have no one to witness it, it’s not really happening. To have those mirrors and reflections of others doing the work is really where the powerful stuff happens. We take the experience of my almost twenty years of holistic vocal coaching to help people somatically experience the voice with movement and breath, to find their authentic voice.
On her advice to other singers
Get out of the practice room. We have to keep the technique up and we have to learn the repertoire but it’s not just about that. Get outside, get your feet in the grass and read the text of the poetry you’re singing. Understand the background and connect with other creatives. Be inspired by what they’re doing. Fail miserably. It’s really just perceived failure, not actual failure. We have to give ourselves the grace and compassion and the catapult of a failure. Give yourself time and space to have that silence, to let the next thing come, because it will. We’re so busy “doing” that we forget that we are human “beings,” and that’s where the creative love comes from.
