Join us for a unique webinar with Professor Emerita Jane Ginsborg, singer turned music psychologist, and one of the world’s leading researchers on how musicians remember music.
Whether you sing pop, classical, jazz, musical theatre or anything in between, this session will give you evidence-based tools to memorise more efficiently, reliably recall, perform with greater confidence, and recover gracefully when your memory does what every singer’s memory occasionally does.
How Singers Memorise Music: What 30 Years of Research Tells Us
Every singer who performs without a score knows the feeling. Weeks of preparation… and then a single word evaporates on stage. The agony of memorising a song in a language you don’t speak. Or the nagging question in the practice room: “Am I actually doing this in the most effective way?”
For 30 years, Jane Ginsborg has been answering exactly those questions. Her initial research involved more than 100 singers and grew into a wide programme. She combines this with in-depth exploration of her own learning and memorising strategies; covering everything from the relationship between words and music in memory, to memorising in a foreign language, to how singers and instrumentalists build a shared performance together.
In this webinar she’ll share the most useful, practical findings of that work, and then she’ll answer your questions.
Memorising isn’t a gift you either have or don’t have. It’s a skill. And there are better and worse ways of doing it.
What You’ll Learn:
- Strategies that expert singers actually use to learn, memorise and recall vocal music, and which ones the research shows truly work
- How memory for words and memory for music interact, and what changes when the words are in your own language vs. a foreign or unfamiliar one
- Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches to memorising, and how to combine them with a deep understanding of the structure of a song or aria, and the story it tells
- Why memory lapses happen in performance, and what to do in the moment so they don’t derail you
- How to teach memorisation to your students — essential for voice teachers and coaches
Bring Your Questions to the Q&A!
The second part of the webinar is yours. Some of the questions you might want to bring:
- “How do I memorise a piece in a language I don’t speak?”
- “Are there different memorising strategies for different kinds of vocal music?”
- “How do I support a student who keeps having memory lapses on stage?”
- “How can I make the most of limited practice time?”
- “How do singer–pianist duos best memorise together?”
Jane welcomes all questions from anyone with an interest in performing vocal music from memory, whether you’re a singer, a teacher, a researcher, or simply curious.
Why Attend?
- 30 years of research, distilled — Jane has studied more than 100 singers and authored foundational work in this field.
- A bridge between science and stage — she started as a professional singer, so this is theory rooted in practice.
- Award-winning expertise — winner of the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award (2002).
- A live Q&A you can steer — submit your questions in advance to make sure they’re addressed.
Who Should Attend?
- Singers in any genre
- Voice teachers and vocal coaches
- Instrumentalists who work with singers
- Conductors and choral directors
- Researchers and anyone fascinated by music and memory
By the end of this session, you’ll walk away with practical, research-backed strategies you can apply to the very next piece you have to memorise.
Professor Emerita Jane Ginsborg began her career as a professional singer after studying music at the University of York (UK) and voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Curiosity about how singers actually remember words and music led her into psychology. She completed her PhD with John Sloboda at Keele University and studied with the late Anders Ericsson (the “deliberate practice” researcher) at Florida State University.
Her early research on singers’ memorisation strategies earned her the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award in 2002 and set the stage for two decades of research into how musicians learn, practice and perform.
Since then, Jane has combined her background in performance and psychology to lead wide-ranging projects on memorisation, musicians’ health and well-being in conservatoires, and music-making with hearing-impaired performers.
In 2025 she retired from the Royal Northern College of Music after 20 years as Professor of Music Psychology, Associate Director of Research and Programme Leader for Research Degrees — though “retired” is misleading: she continues to supervise PhD students, review, edit, write and conduct research.
Qualifications at a glance: PhD · BA Hons (Psychology) · BA Hons (Music) · ADipGSMD · Chartered Psychologist (C.Psychol.) · Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS) · Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) · Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (FISM)
Can’t attend the webinar live and not (yet) a member of The singsing! Sofa Library? No worries! When you enroll (scroll up 👆🏼), you can opt in for 2 weeks of replay access. Click here for more info on the replays of live webinars.
Included:
After enrolling, you will receive a 10% thank-you code on your first billing cycle should you decide to subscribe to The singsing! Sofa Library.
Library members enjoy unlimited replay access to all past webinars, including this session, as well as classes taught by me and top guest experts in voice and performance.