Chris Martin loves her. Yungblud thinks she’s a rockstar: Meet the eightysomething vocal coach essential to the stars
Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This It’s February 2016. Backstage at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Chris Martin is doing vocal exercises with a Bristolian woman in her seventies. Minutes from now, Coldplay will headline the Super Bowl 50 halftime show before an audience of 115 million. Martin, his nerves humming like a live wire, has flown out his vocal coach from London just for this. Not, one imagines, that he needed the training. After all, he’s Chris Martin! It’s just that, when she got wind of who else was on the bill – Beyoncé! Bruno Mars! – her eyebrows shot up. “Well,” Martin remembers her saying, “You’d better have a lesson, then.” Her name is Mary Hammond. She has flaming red hair, and glacier-blue eyes that miss nothing. A doyenne of vocal coaching, loved within show business, unknown outside of it, she has taught everyone from Martin and Adele …









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