Voice Print Music Academy: A growing platform for youngsters to find their voice
The Voice Print Music Academy (VPMA) was launched in 2017 by Dilan Irugalbandara together with Matheesha Udawatte as they observed a serious gap or lack of good quality vocal training classes and wanted to utilise the knowledge and experience they had to create a space for young musicians to find their voice.
Begun with about 10 students in one class they now have over 200 students and a variety of classes for different age groups. They started out at the Voice Print studio in Wattala and expanded to Negombo and Colombo and hope to reach Kandy this year.
VPMA offers both online vocal training classes and instudio vocal training classes, guitar classes, piano classes and drum lessons and are also planning to start music theory for international and local syllabus along with violin classes later this year. Online classes for Sri Lankan students living in Australia are being run as well.
Director of VPMA Dilan specialises in vocal training / composing and arranging Acapella music. As Music Director for Voice Print Music he was awarded silver and bronze ratings as a conductor for the World Choir Games in China. Matheesha, also director of the
Academy, has a Biomedical science degree from the University of Northumbria and is also a model. She has been singing since her school days and released her first original song last month.
VPMA’s classes cover different age groups from four upwards.
“We basically provide a platform for all the kids to let go and perform freely and enjoy music while learning from the best,” the Directors say.
The VPMA choirs have had success at choir festivals like the Somerset Festival where two of their singers received Best Performer awards and at the 3rd Bandung Choral Society World Virtual Choir Festival 2021, where the VPMA choir performed a rendition of Michael Jackson’s song, “Will you be there” and received a special award for the “Most Expressive Performance”. They also won the gold medal in that category emerging winners at this festival.