This summer, members of the Stetson University School of Music voice faculty traveled to San Antonio to present at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) National Conference, one of the largest and most respected gatherings of voice teachers and researchers in the world. Their work spanned the full range of the field, from the science of how singers perceive their own voices to the artistry of the musical theatre stage.

Dr. Chadley Ballantyne, Associate Professor of Music, Voice, presented across three sessions. In “Special Acts of Breathing,” he joined Kayla Gautereaux of Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Ian Howell, founder of the Embodied Music Lab, to demonstrate new tools for visualizing how the body breathes while singing. In “Where Sound Meets Touch,” he shared original research, carried out with Stetson undergraduate Eloisy Goncalves, on how singers feel and hear their own voices. And in “The Feedback Loop,” he joined a national panel on teaching alongside some of the most influential figures in the profession: Allen Henderson of Georgia Southern University, the outgoing Executive Director of NATS; John Nix of the University of Texas at San Antonio, a co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Voice Pedagogy; Nicholas Perna of the University of Colorado Boulder; and Yvonne Gonzales Redman of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Carly Wingfield, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, presented “Enhancing Equity and Easing Anxiety” with Yvonne Gonzales Redman of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their research explores how virtual reality can let singers rehearse in a replica of a performance venue before they ever arrive, easing performance anxiety and widening access to spaces that are otherwise difficult to experience in advance.

Dr. Olivia Yokers, Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Opera, took the stage for “Diving into Duets: MT Edition,” a mini recital with André Chiang and Valerie Trujillo of Florida State University celebrating beloved and underperformed duets from across the history of American musical theatre.

Dr. Karen Coker Merritt, Associate Professor of Music, Voice, also attended the conference, joining her colleagues for a week of learning, performance, and connection with voice professionals from across the country.

That a single voice area could contribute across breathing science, perception research, performance psychology, and musical theatre, and do so beside the field’s most recognized names, speaks to the depth of the work underway at Stetson. It reflects a School of Music whose faculty are not only teaching the next generation of singers but helping shape how singing itself is understood and taught.