There’s a new club in town. Word on the street is it’s designed to make you feel happy, inspired, meet like minded people, and have your voice be heard (Literally).
Sounds good, right?
Award winning singer, producer and director of the former Irishtown Stage School, Liza Caulfifield is back with a bang with an all new singing Glee club.
Liza has a long history in participating and teaching performing arts and has every aspect of theatre production and technical elements under her belt. She is also an event manager by trade.
Since 2020 Liza has been in a carer role for her dad and she closed her Irishtown Stage School after 12 years when the pandemic hit, but she never lost the love of music. Two years ago she had her own health issues, she had a large tumour in her neck taken out with all the lymph nodes and at that time she didn’t know what the prognosis would be regarding her vocal cords and the nerves, but thankfully, she made a full recovery and her voice is a strong as ever. Her relationship with the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre started in January when The Riverside Choir had recommenced.
She was there primarily as a supporting role for her dad Sean as he is a member, and within two weeks she ended up singing with the choir and started getting the urge again to do something on a smaller scale that didn’t involve a massive amount of organisation like a theatre school would, but could still care for her dad and look after the family.
Liza approached the manager of RICC, Lorraine Barry and Jennifer Betts (PR) to ask if she could look into starting a six-week pilot scheme there to see if it would work out, and they agreed wholeheartedly and thus the Glee Club Singing School was created. Initially it was set for youths aged between 8 and 16 to learn the glee inspired classics, enjoy movement, sing your heart out, learn new songs and avail of Liza’s expertise and vocal coaching with an end of term performance, but there was also a huge interest in adding on an over 18’s so she ended up with over 30 members in the ladies group and 16 members in the kids.
Liza has all the training needed to teach classes and look after youths and her ethics around working with young people are very important to her. Both groups performed at the May Day Parade in RICC which was massively received by everyone.
The pilot programme for the ladies concluded on May 18th with an outstanding end of class show with their six songs they learned, including the kids joining in for a rendition of ‘Sing’ by Gary Barlow, which just gave the audience goosebumps. The harmonies were simply beautiful and it showed everybody how well the class had developed and progressed under Liza’s guidance and her passion for teaching. The kids final show was on May 29th and they performed their six songs, with the ladies joining in with them on ‘Sing’, and once again, the audience were bowled over by the talent and abilities these kids have.
Liza will officially launch both Glee Clubs in September and will put together a full scale service. Anyone can join and the clubs are for beginners also, there’s no prerequisite that you must have an amazing
singing voice already, it’s improving on the voice you have or to learn more about warming up the voice,
breathing control, looking after it with exercise and learning about the structure and how that works, having fun with it also. Not everybody is into sports or dance so this is a different social outlet that
brings people together and it’s something Liza can get back into herself after her hiatus from singing and performing.
Since returning into music Liza has been involved in a number of projects.
She sang on the RICC Radio podcast for International Women’s Day, and also got involved with the Ringsend AllStars band, formed by Dylan Clayton of the Rockschool and they performed at the Festival on May 6th. She has been welcomed with open arms into this musical ‘family’ and loves every second.
Liza is an avid swimmer and swims three miles a week which helps with her singing voice and health. Swimming is the best exercise for singers as it conditions the heart and lungs, increases the breath capacity and stretches the throat, providing a quality vocal output.
Future plans from this talented lady include a Christmas concert in St Patrick’s Church Ringsend, partnered up with a few charities to raise funds for them. Liza believes in giving back to those in need
so her vision is to provide a lovely evening of entertainment for the whole community to enjoy, to capture the ambience of the magic of Christmas, and atmospherically it’s sure to be a dazzling and enchanted evening. This is already in the pipeline for planning and it sounds very exciting indeed.
If you want to get in touch with Liza, you can find her on Facebook and Instagram or email lizacaulfifield@gmail.com.
