Welcome to Threading Voices
Hello, I’m Melanie — and singing has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I didn’t grow up in a family steeped in music, but I fell in love with singing as a child; school assemblies and plays, choirs and local musical theatre groups all introduced me to the joy of singing with others.
Along the way, I have lost my voice more than once. The process of unwrapping and rebuilding it opened up a deeper curiosity about the relationship between voice and body — about listening more closely to what the body might be telling us, and about the life experiences we accumulate along the way that can inhibit our voices or make us hold back from our own sound. Discovering my own voice has not been a linear path, and that has strengthened my belief that everyone has a voice stashed away inside them.
A professional singing career spanning more than twenty years took me around the UK and beyond — from cover bands, production shows, musical theatre and cabaret to Gilbert & Sullivan, choral music and opera. For ten years I sang regularly with the Extra Chorus of English National Opera. David Alden’s searing 2009 production of Peter Grimes remaining a particular highlight.
Community singing has often run alongside operatic work — beginning with interactive one-woman reminiscence shows in care homes early in my career, and continuing through many years of singing with people living with dementia, both independently and with charities such as Lost Chord UK.
That work has sat alongside creating projects for other singers, including Audition Oracle and By Voice Alone, both with a focus on widening access to opportunities and helping singers find their way to and through the profession.
2021 saw the first of several long-distance walks across Spain to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, and onwards to the coast. Somewhere along the way came the realisation that, as much as I had loved singing opera, the desire to perform was no longer there.
In 2023, I stumbled across the glorious Sophia Efthimiou of Singing Ourselves Home, leading a singing circle in a field at Medicine Festival. That session reawakened my love of harmony singing and led me to train in song leading with Sophia and other practitioners. It also opened the door to a very different relationship with voice and the sharing of song.
All of which has brought me here, to beautiful Derbyshire — where I plan to keep singing and very much hope you’ll join me.
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