Your Institute Leaders

Lynn Helding is Professor of Voice and Vocal Pedagogy at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. She is the author of The Musician's Mind: Teaching, Learning and Performance in the Age of Brain Science (Rowman and Littlefield 2020), a book deemed “Essential” by CHOICE Magazine, “a unique and outstanding contribution to pedagogy" by Voice and Speech Review and “ground-breaking ... [and] an invaluable contribution to the field of music pedagogy” by Renée Fleming. She authored the chapter “Brain” in Scott McCoy’s fundamental voice pedagogy work, Your Voice: An Inside View, founded and authored the “Mindful Voice” column in the Journal of Singing  for many years, and served as the journal’s editor-in-chief from May 2023-2025. Her pedagogy honors include membership in the prestigious American Academy of Teachers of Singing and recognition as “a legendary figure in the field of voice pedagogy” by the Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah University, receiving their 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award. Her stage credits include leading roles in opera, oratorio and musical theatre, and recitals featuring commissioned works and contemporary American music performed on multiple tours throughout the United States, Australia, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Iceland where her performances were broadcast on Icelandic National Radio. She studied at the University of Montana, in Vienna, Austria and Indiana University where she was the first singer ever accepted to the Artist Diploma in Voice. She earned her master’s degree in vocal pedagogy from Westminster Choir College of Rider University and completed the vocology course at the National Center for Voice and Speech, where she now returns annually as guest faculty for the renowned Utah Center for Vocology at the University of Utah. She is currently at work on her second book, The Art of Vocology: Practicing Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing.

With a doctorate in Choral Conducting (University of Alberta / IRCAM, Paris), a master’s degree in Vocal Pedagogy (U. Laval), and a Certificate in Vocology from the University of Utah, there is nothing Laurier Fagnan enjoys more than inspiring choral singers to make the most beautiful and acoustically efficient sound possible. His doctoral dissertation titled “The Acoustical Effects of the Core Principles of the Bel Canto Method on Choral Singing” garnered national awards in both Canada (Choral Canada) and the United States (Julius Herford Prize, ACDA). His partnership with l'IRCAM (Institute for Research in Musical Acoustics) in Paris has led to the development of innovative tools to acoustically analyze choral singing. This innovative field of choral acoustics has led him to give lectures at several international conferences and to offer vocal technique workshops to hundreds of choirs in Canada, the United States and France. He has been an invited speaker for both the European Choral Federation and the Acoustical Society of America. Dr. Fagnan is Director of the Vocal Acoustics Laboratory at Campus Saint-Jean of the University of Alberta, where he is full professor. He is constantly in search of bridging concepts of vocal science and artistic expression to provide conductors and choristers/singers with the vocal and pedagogical information and strategies they require to realize their full artistic potential. As conductor, he has been Artistic Director of Western Canada’s largest francophone choir, Chorale Saint-Jean, for the past 31 years. He has been guest conductor at several international festivals and has had the privilege of conducting concerts in venues such as Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and Carnegie Hall in New York. He is a recipient of the Richard S. Eaton Award and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his contribution to the Canadian choral music sector.