Testimonial Archives

Jake Hassam helped me to improve my voice, intonation and general delivery of BBC Radio pieces in English. I’m not a native English speaker, so we worked on clarity, expression and addressed individual vowel sounds. The sessions were extremely enjoyable, fun, very clear and well thought-out. I regularly use the new skills that he helped me to develop.

Jake is a brilliant vocal coach who clearly knows his stuff. He was able to pass on his excellent understanding of the voice in a way that made sense to me and helped me to understand the issues I’d been experiencing. In understanding these issues, and being given the tools and exercises required to tackle them, I felt hugely empowered. Jake is a great teacher making the lessons both relaxing and restorative. My voice felt so much more supported after each one and the work helped me hugely with the run of my solo show at Soho Theatre. I look forward to working with him again!

Working with Jake has been totally brilliant.  His tailored approach is exactly what I needed.  I came to him with a few problems and he has sorted me out!  He has given me the tools to look after my voice through long runs, and bring it out to fill auditoriums.  His voice support for my solo show (Bottom at Edinburgh Fringe, transferring to Soho Theatre) was eye opening and has transformed the piece – helping me find truth, depth and clarity.  He has a completely supportive approach that makes me comfortable and immediately at ease.

Working with Jake has been transformative. His kind and open approach is allowing me to break through years of tension and access the wonderful sounds beneath. His vast knowledge means we can experiment and explore until we find what works. It’s challenging work but his supportive and joyful approach makes it fun. I could not recommend him more.

There were two reasons I started working with Jake.

The first was that I needed help to pronounce words correctly and the second was to help me gain confidence with speaking in public. At the time I had started a course in English.

Jake showed me some good breathing exercises which helped me project my voice which, when coupled with improvements to my speech, made me feel more confident.

Working with Jake was a pleasure and he made learning both easy and fun.

Jake helped me to become a better English speaker.

I am a biologist from Serbia and a lot of my time is spent researching with colleagues which involves a lot of speaking.  I had become very frustrated and embarrassed because people couldn’t understand what I was saying, even though the words that came out of my mouth were correct.  I initially wanted to lose my Serbian accent, but Jake empowered me to embrace it, and gave me the skills to slow my speech down – Serbian is very quick.  I can’t thank him enough!