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\u2019s Chris Martin! It\u2019s just that, when she got wind of who else was on the bill \u2013 Beyonc\u00e9<\/a>! Bruno Mars<\/a>! \u2013 her eyebrows shot up. \u201cWell,\u201d Martin remembers her saying, \u201cYou\u2019d better have a lesson, then.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a> to Yungblud<\/a> and Sir Ian McKellen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s never going to bulls*** you,\u201d says Martin, who has enlisted her on each of the record five occasions that Coldplay<\/a> have headlined Glastonbury. \u201cA tiny drop of praise is worth barrelsful from anyone else. Her soul is warm. And because she\u2019s a singer herself, she knows you need a kind of emotional protection. If she says you\u2019ll be fine, you take that seriously \u2013 because she wouldn\u2019t say it otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n For 26 years, Martin has been her student. Now I\u2019m one, too. I spent much of my early thirties writing about other people\u2019s voices for a living. My own, unvarnished, has been described \u2013 by a music critic buddy of mine \u2013 as having a \u201cbeautiful naivety\u201d to it. Hmmm. She, at least, stayed to hear me throw the kitchen sink at Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cGraceland\u201d during a celebrity party we once gate-crashed. I remember closing my eyes to emote the words \u201cLosing love is like a window in your heart\u201d and opening them to see that everyone within range had scattered. To be fair, it was Charlotte Church\u2019s do, so they must have had higher expectations, but you get the idea. A mellifluous instrument it is not.<\/p>\n When the frontman of a band I know, placed with Hammond by his label, told me that anyone could learn to sing, I took it as a challenge. Surely no one could make my voice sound pleasant? I had to find out.<\/p>\n At Hammond’s house in north London, the windows are (mercifully) triple-glazed, an enormous Persian rug covers the floor, and a tuba sits in the corner with flowers arranged in its bell. Occupying the far wall is a harpsichord \u2013 black-lacquered, hand-painted, and built by her husband of more than 60 years, Peter, formerly a cellist with the London Philharmonic. A cello rests nearby; a double bass stands broodingly by the fireplace. Beside the grand piano, framed photographs crowd a bookshelf. One is of Hammond overseeing Martin as he practises. On my first visit, I pass Cruz Beckham<\/a> on the doorstep on the way in (\u201ca genuinely nice, down-to-earth young man\u201d, observes Hammond).<\/p>\n Her ability to access an artist\u2019s mindset, and pivot to how I\u2019d approach a song, blew me away<\/p>\n Yungblud<\/p>\n In that lesson, she has me supine on the floor, my hand on my stomach, learning how air moves. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in lying,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIf something\u2019s not working, I\u2019ll tell you. And if something\u2019s there, I\u2019ll tell you that, too.\u201d At the end, she asks me to sing. Anything I like. Convinced I possess a slinky falsetto, I choose \u201cI Believe in a Thing Called Love\u201d by neo-glam-rockers The Darkness. \u201cThat,\u201d says Hammond afterwards, \u201creminded me of the time Dame Edna Everage stood at that very piano. Did you mean it to be comic?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSinging is such an exposing thing,\u201d Yungblud tells me. The three-time Grammy winner, having briefly attended the Arts Educational School in west London, already had a certain theatricality; now his pliant vocals veer effortlessly from a growl to a howl. \u201cObviously, she\u2019s unbelievable at exercises and strengthening the voice, but her ability to access an artist\u2019s mindset, and pivot to how I\u2019d approach a song, blew me away.\u201d<\/p>\n No contemporary British vocal coach has accumulated quite the breadth of experience Hammond has. Trained at the Royal Academy in both singing and piano in the Sixties, she watched her contemporaries head for Glyndebourne and Stuttgart. Instead, she went to Southend pier to perform as a singer in a summer variety season; a baptism of fire, she says, but one that was in tune with her effervescent personality.<\/p>\n A stellar career as a session singer followed: from the BBC\u2019s Friday Night Is Music Night to the great concert halls, from Sondheim to the Three Tenors, close enough to Pavarotti, Domingo and Caball\u00e9 to hear them breathe. She sang on a Paul McCartney and Wings album \u2013 George Martin, she recalls, walked the microphone line checking who wasn\u2019t blending, ensuring no single voice stood out. All the while she was raising the two children she\u2019d had in her early twenties. In the late Eighties, she was a vocal coach on the first production of Les Mis\u00e9rables. Through the Nineties she set up the first postgraduate musical theatre course at the Royal Academy, becoming \u2013 show by show \u2013 the coach that West End producers called first.<\/p>\n \u201cI just always had it,\u201d says Hammond, of teaching. \u201cIt felt very natural.\u201d In 2000, when Coldplay went stratospheric with the release of their debut album Parachutes, Martin phoned. He\u2019d been told he\u2019d never get her: \u201cShe\u2019ll be too busy.\u201d But Hammond made time \u2013 and it continues to matter. \u201cI remember thinking it was a temporary thing, feeling intimidated,\u201d Martin says of performing to large audiences. \u201cBut it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary has always been there at the important moments<\/p>\n Actor Janie Dee<\/p>\n In person, Hammond is magnificent company: funny, loquacious, and fond of a swear. When she laughs, her whole body moves, like a conductor bringing an orchestra to its feet. Over the course of a year, without either of us quite noticing, she becomes as much a confidante as a vocal coach. We go to the theatre together. She rings to check in. As my own anxiety bubbles up across those months, brought on by my parents\u2019 failing health, I find myself trusting her in ways I hadn\u2019t anticipated. Our conversations are a sort of analgesic balm for whatever is fraying.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about her being a mother figure, or even a grandmother \u2013 that\u2019s part of her magic,\u201d says Martin.<\/p>\n The consensus is that Hammond makes you feel safe. \u201cSinging is vulnerable,\u201d she explains. \u201cThings on people\u2019s minds \u2013 they just tumble out, I don\u2019t ask.\u201d Combining surgical precision with occasional afterburner blasts of warmth is what gives Hammond her particular, unshakeable authority. She\u2019s indefatigable.<\/p>\n Janie Dee<\/a>, a two-time Olivier winner whose turn in 2017 as showgirl Phyllis in Sondheim\u2019s Follies at the National received rapturous applause, has known Hammond for nearly 50 years, having first been taught by her at the age of 14.<\/p>\n \u201cShe vibrated with energy,\u201d Dee says of that first meeting. \u201cShe\u2019s always been there at the important moments. I lost my voice once, just before an opening night. She dropped everything and came to the theatre. Afterwards, she told me to inhale steam to soothe my vocal cords and then rest, and that everything would be alright. She was right. But it was the fact that she came.\u201d<\/p>\n By any measure, Hammond was ahead of her time. In an era when classical technique was the only accepted form of vocal training in Britain, she was among the first to explore new scientific research into the voice and to realise its relevance to teaching. While well versed in classical technique, she was also a proponent of ideas developed by American researcher Jo Estill, whose videos of the vocal tract explained, for the first time, the precise physical mechanics of \u201cbelt\u201d (think Aretha Franklin), \u201ctwang\u201d (Dolly Parton), and \u201ctilt\u201d (Sam Smith) \u2013 terms that are now established in voice-coaching vocabulary. \u201cWhen you read about it in a book,\u201d Hammond says, \u201cI find it difficult to teach. I have to feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n In practice, a lesson with Hammond is part science, part excavation. Breathing exercises come first \u2013 she equates air with the bow of a violin crossing a string. No air, no resonance. Then come the songs: Johnny Cash\u2019s dolorous cover of \u201cHurt\u201d, Frankie Valli\u2019s life-affirming \u201cCan\u2019t Take My Eyes Off You\u201d, Frank Sinatra\u2019s swooning \u201cFly Me to the Moon\u201d \u2013 each one requiring me to truly commit.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re scared of singing, you stop yourself,\u201d Hammond says. Over the year, I learn to give it full throttle, for better or worse. Wincing slightly as I attempt one of my fortnightly arpeggios, she tells me repeatedly that there is a \u201ctexture\u201d to my voice. \u201cYou\u2019re not actually tone-deaf,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n Arty Froushan, who played Patrick Bateman in the Almeida\u2019s recent production of American Psycho<\/a> \u2013 a show I attend with Hammond \u2013 calls her \u201cthe guru to end all gurus\u201d and credits her for the acclaim he received. \u201cHer touch is so light that you don\u2019t even realise you\u2019re transforming,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then, all of a sudden, one day, you can just do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Yungblud\u2019s experience has been rather more unconventional: she had him treat his entire 2025 album, Idols, like a Broadway score. \u201cVery different for a rock musician,\u201d he says. \u201cThe band call her Yoda.\u201d His favourite moments, he adds, are \u201cwhen she comes to rehearsals \u2013 she sits in the back like the Queen, her in-ears in, microphone in hand, shouting at me through the songs to drop my jaw\u201d.<\/p>\n Beyond being a brilliant teacher, Hammond is a deep well of anecdotes. Name almost anyone in British show business and it\u2019s likely she\u2019s taught them. Last October, I mentioned I was interviewing actor Alan Cumming<\/a>. \u201cOh, he\u2019s been here,\u201d she said. Ralph Fiennes<\/a> (\u201cOpen-minded\u201d), Dame Diana Rigg<\/a> (\u201cMeticulous\u201d) and Graham Norton<\/a> (\u201cHardworking\u201d) have all been to see her, too.<\/p>\n She speaks about her students in the way a parent might \u2013 proudly and with a protectiveness that is unwavering. Of Martin, who she says boasts a palette that extends way beyond the plaintive falsetto for which he\u2019s renowned, she is particularly effusive. \u201cHe\u2019s warm, he\u2019s kind. Not up his own arse at all.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\u2018The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/attemot1.jpeg\")
\u2018The guru to end all gurus\u2019: Hammond in her north London home (Evangeline Armstrong)<\/p>\n![\"Star](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-508986176.jpeg\")
Star student: Coldplay\u2019s Chris Martin performing at the Super Bowl in 2016 (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Hammond](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ergtberfw.jpeg\")
Hammond with acclaimed composer Hans Zimmer at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Party at the Palace (Mary Hammond)<\/p>\n![\"\u2018The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/KH-2025-07-05-0636.jpg\")
\u2018The bigger you get, the more truth you need to hear\u2019: Yungblud performs at the Black Sabbath farewell show (Kazuyo Horie)<\/p>\n