Tracey Larrabee - President - ARREST Production House (US)

Tracey has over 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry. Her career began in the record industry with BMG before joining CBS. She later worked with Entercom and is currently VP for National Partnerships and Investment with Audacy Inc.

Tracey has a deep knowledge of events, marketing, organisational strategy, partnerships, sponsorship, investment and sales and has worked as part of the senior management group to develop and see the growth of CBS/Entercom/Audacy Inc. into one of the two leading organisations in music and radio in the United States.

Tracey brings great love and passion for music, theater and events to ARREST Production House and is excited to oversee its strategic development and expansion into the United States, Latin America, the UK and the EU.

Martin Grimwood - Creative Producer (AUS/US)

Martin developed ARREST with a simple goal, to engage people through merging traditional performance craft with storytelling in a modern context. Martin brings a wealth of theatre experience to this project and has seen the successful expansion of many theatre projects into international markets.

He was born in Sydney, Australia to Lorraine and Paul Grimwood. After living in Perth, Melbourne, and Wellington, New Zealand he graduated from St Ignatius College, Riverview (Sydney) in 1991. His father an aeronautical engineer and art lover was educated and later worked as a Professor at Cornell University, New York. His mother also a champion of the performing arts was a classical pianist and occupational therapist. Martin studied drama through the National Theatre Drama School (Melbourne, Australia), and with the Atlantic Theatre Company (New York). Martin has been studying the Italian operatic craft of Bel Canto since 2006 with Dr Graham Clarke. He has a Licentiate from Trinity College, London and is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Middlesex University, also in London.

On the stage he has performed in musicals including the lead in "Oklahoma," "Sound Of Music," and in Cameron Mackintosh's "Oliver.” In theatre he has performed in many plays including, “Macbeth”, “Twelfth Night”, “Farmyard”, “Missing”, “He Died With A Felafel In His Hand”, “The Fiery Angel” (The Kirov Opera), “Girl”, “Spring Awakening’’, “City in the Bush” and the Pre-Broadway run of Merman (San Francisco). For television he has played roles in Neighbours, Secret Life Of Us, Stingers, Blue Heelers, CSI New York, Satisfaction and more.

He has been involved in the development of programs for the US SuperBowl, Pre-Broadway San Francisco, Parisian Opening Macau, New Year Countdown Celebrations Hong Kong, Aquascalientes Festival Mexico, Singapore National Arts Council, Melbourne Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, Day Of The Dead Festival - Valle De Bravo - Mexico City, WOMAD Festival Adelaide, Comedy Festival Melbourne and The Famous Spielgeltent, to name a few. Martin has toured internationally with a host of companies including Strange Fruit Productions, Acoustic Voice Productions and APH Productions in many of their shows to countries including, The United States, Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Ireland, Turkmenistan, India, UAE, Macau, Japan, China and many more. 

Martin has over 20 years experience in events ranging from managing music artists and music events to theatre and music festivals both nationally and internationally. Through directing, producing, performance management, creative direction and performance across many continents Martin has honed his skills in theatre through working within diverse cultures and across many areas of the entertainment industry. 

Dr Graham Clarke - Musical Director (AUS/US)

Graham's initial training at undergraduate level was as a concert pianist. He was taught by Roy Shepherd, Reader, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne. He has worked professionally as a singer, accompanist, assistant conductor, a musical director, and as an arranger. He was the first voice teacher engaged by Mr John Sumner, AO, CBE, the founding director of Melbourne Theatre Company and he continued teaching there for four and a half years and also worked as Musical Director for many of the companies professional shows.

This led to being asked by Ms Alisa Piper (now of the Victorian Arts Centre Trust) to give voice workshops for professional users and aspiring actors at Playbox Theatre Company. As a result of accompanying singers at auditions in Her Majesty’s Theatre for JC Williamsons, Ms Sue Nattras, AO, engaged him to accompany auditionees for “Evita” with Mr Hal Prince as director. 

The Edgley group have engaged him as an accompanist for auditions and for concert appearances. Highlights of this time also include working as audition pianist and vocal advisor on the casting of the national touring company for “Joseph”, “Oklahoma!” with Jamie Hammerstein as director, “Barnum” with Baayork Lee as director, “The Sound of Music”, Best Little Whorehouse”, and “Westside Story” conducted by Dobbs Frank. 

He has been a musical consultant and performing artist (including pianist) for companies such as Crawford Productions (television) and the musical director for many music theatre events including concerts, cabarets, theatre restaurants, recording studio sessions, and theatrical productions such as the national touring companies of “They’re Playing Our Song” and “Peach Melba”. 

His students have taught singing and voice production to fellow professionals throughout the world, including England, Japan (alongside Jo Estill), and in America at Shakespeare and Company (the Linklater group).

This demonstrates that they are accepted as world class educators who were trained in his studio. As further evidence of his students’ international recognition, his private practice student roll includes names (and skill ranges) as diverse as:

• Kylie Minogue (pop)

• Helen Noonan (opera)

• Daryl Braithwaite (pop)

• Stephen Housden (‘Little River Band’),

• David Hobson (Opera Australia, ‘It Takes Two’, and ‘Dancing with the Stars’)

• Evelyn Krape (comedian)

• Beverley Dunn (actor)

• Daniel MacPherson (UK ‘Godspell’ ‘City Homicide’)

• Jonathan Hardy (actor)

• Alan Dale (‘The OC’ ‘Ugly Betty’)

• Jesse Spencer (‘House’)

Former students of his are now on staff at the Melbourne Theatre Company, Playbox, the Victorian Arts Centre, and teach in major schools at both secondary and tertiary levels. Many students perform internationally in centres such as London’s West End, D’Oly Carte Opera, the professional jazz scene in Paris, the German pop scene and operatic houses, as well as theatre and cabaret in Asia. His students have appeared in West End productions such as “Kiss Me Kate” (Brenda Clarke, understudy for Kate); “Sugar Babies” (Joy Bishop, ensemble), and Janice Torrens understudied Elaine Page in “Anything Goes”, to name just several.

Knowing and patience are key components of being an artist.

(as spoken by Graham Clarke and edited by Martin Grimwood)

‘Like the committed approach of an archaeologist, the gradual accumulation of knowing requires me to get down on ones knees every day, pull out their handheld fork, and slowly chip away at the sand that will eventually uncover what is already there — a greater truth and a greater knowing. Though we have earthmoving equipment that can tunnel through a mountain, we need the humble position of being on our knees as we break up the hardened crust of the earth with our fork’

Philosophy of Dr Graham Clarke

I firmly stand outside the current orthodoxy of the voice production model as being air driven; the bag-pipe principle. The model I work with is the classical European tradition of voice; the cello principle. That is, I make a distinction between conversational and emphatic voice use.

Our day-to-day voice use is not “normal” in that it is as neutralised and imitative from of primal utterance.  I assert that speech and music share the common source of the human cry. I maintain that most Western art voice-use is now monotonous chiefly because of a false or incomplete physiological view—air movement through approximated vocal folds—as the premise of voice production. One of the effects of this voice-use is the stultifying of emotionally charged utterances performers would make, by the very act of making it.

Since the time of the composer Caccini (1602) until the last 60 years, the vertically harmonic content of tone was seen as an integral consideration. The acoustical difference between linguistic vowels and their emotional primary counterparts may be said to reflect the difference between the limited notational analysis of a musical work, and the vertical timbral approach to music’s sounding.

Parents respond to the needs of their young babies through the intuitive, primary, perception of timbral meaning. When voice use in the theatre takes into account the possibilities of timbral meaning, it too may evoke emotional responses in the hearer with the immediacy of a reflex—as if the tones were ‘pure’ or humanly authentic in source. This recognition is linked with the so-called ‘Fight or Flight’ reflex response system. Professor David Galliver wrote in 1974 that the ability to vary the overtones of the voice ‘as a result of emotional impulse’ was a feature of the European tradition.

The foregoing is not ever possible with a ‘supported’ voice which can only add ‘power’ or ‘thickness’ of tone at the level of the fundamental and the harmonic content remains fixed.  With those who vary the tone for a specific genre, timbral meaning still eludes them within that genre as they simply have shifted into a different fixed or static vocal posture. It is my view that theatre should not be an arena where an audience has the thrill of being a spectator at an athletic competition.

To develop my claim, the following distinction between an artist and an audience must be considered. If an artist feels some emotional response, actively recalls an emotional state—remembers how s/he felt when ‘x’ happened—s/he performs in what I term a reactive or feeling state. The audience’s response is that of passive observation. They may, or may not, choose to be involved. They observe the artist feeling the work. All too often now, what is essentially a therapeutic learning tool for an actor/singer gets taken onto a stage mistakenly as a performance skill.

If, however, an artist’s performance is through statement then it is the audience who consequently do the feeling and reacting. The actor/singer acts so that the audience may react. One refers to ‘an actor’ not to ‘a feeler’ when describing the vocation.

I wish to suggest very strongly that the experience under a ‘professional’ teacher in a studio bears no resemblance to the experience in an auditorium. By way of contrast, a practitioner-turned-teacher would know how voicing worked in an auditorium and so foster the causal ability in a student. S/he would not work to reproduce an effect which, even by definition, could never have become a primary source. There is no substitute for the maturation of the kinaesthetic sense-memory over years of practise and conditioning. This automatically leads to the ability to experience empathetically another’s body use in performance.

Mine is a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching. It is not repertoire-based. My concern is to combine theory with a sound knowledge of the practical performance situation. Work is described, explained, conceptualised, as well as experienced, which gives students a firm grasp of the principles of the work in theory and practice: a skill base. My goal is to establish independent, secure theatre workers.

To that end, I have developed course work which addresses through psychology, sociology, history, linguistics, biology, anatomy, applied acoustics and physics, and the performance-practice handed down from one generation of artists to the next. I have taught this course privately and based my teaching at University of Ballarat on it. There, I taught voice at all the undergraduate levels for music theatre, acting, and the production stream.

My doctoral thesis was a reflexive study on the formalising of the principles of the classical European tradition of solo singing into a course. I showed how it is possible to acquire skill-based competencies through discipline-connected class teaching. I have made explicit not only the processes but also the theoretical base of those processes and the reasoning behind choices in each of the modules. I carefully constructed the thesis on a skill learning model that it might prove a valuable teacher resource.

The classical European tradition of solo singing has a strong line of performers who work within its definition. Beginning with contemporary Australians they include: Rosamund Illing, David Hobson, Helen Noonan, Gregory Yurisich; while overseas they include: Elizabeth Harwood, Thomas Hemsley, Peter Pears, Elsie Morrison, Rise Stevens, Kenny Baker, Albert Lance, and Paul Robson to name but a few.

I hold that excellence in performance may be achieved when the act of voicing serves the larger purpose of expressing, in an artistic manner, something about the human condition. The process of voice production should not be apparent to the audience, nor should it be offered as the performance! In the theatre, voice use is the heightened human utterance in an artistic setting.