The Spring 2026 Voice Intensive will take place from Monday, February 9 through Friday, February 13.
Designed in the spirit of collaboration and exchange, it is intended to add depth and breadth to the traditional voice curriculum.
Voice Intensive seeks to promote the Center of Music's mission to educate students who transform the human condition through the art and practice of music.
Beyond the Legacy: Florence Price the Advocate
Tamara Acosta
Price’s pursuit of recognition on her own artistic merit was inseparable from her commitment to opening doors for other marginalized composers and poets. This presentation reframes Price not only as a rediscovered genius, but as an active cultural advocate who used her voice and music to challenge exclusion and reshape American musical life.
The Song Blanket: Creating from an Ancestral World View
Rebecca Hass
Students will learn about the creation and meaning of guest artist Rebecca Hass’s new work, The Song Blanket, being performed on Friday, February 13th at 7pm in Hockett.
Feldenkrais
Carol McAmis
Feldenkrais is a gentle, guided movement experience that helps you improve how you move and feel by increasing awareness, reducing effort, and discovering easier, more efficient patterns.
Please bring with you a blanket or floor mat, and wear comfortable, moveable clothes.
Alexander Technique Explorations
Paula Murray Cole
Students will be introduced to the Alexander Technique by doing activities which engage its core principles.
Building a Mission Based Non-Profit in the Arts
Martha Guth
The "nuts and bolts" required for building a non-profit from the ground up - bring your questions and ideas!
Welsh Art Song
Rachel Schutz
Join us as we explore the world of art song from Wales. Learn a little bit about Welsh diction and hear songs by composers you’ve never heard of before.
Practicing with Purpose
Brad Hougham
Join Dr. Hougham to explore your practice routine and discover new methods and approaches that might empower your study time between lessons!
Singing the Land
Rebecca Hass
Join Rebecca Hass (Nitaawegiizhigok) for an interactive workshop that invites creatives to consider their music making through the lens of place. Together we will explore what it is to give voice as a whole body experience and in connection to the land we are on and from which we come. Through intuitive listening we will seek empower our voices as storytellers of, and through land.
Signing in Co-Harmony: An Introduction to Trauma-Informed Voice Care
Megan Durham
Through discussion and embodied practice, this workshop explores how trauma-informed voice spaces are defined and cultivated. Using somatic exploration, participants will consider how “safety” is relative to individual experience and is co-created through relationship.
Personal Empowerment through the Pursuit of Music
Brad Hougham
We are all on our individual journey through this life. Along the way, we have experienced ups and downs, delights and disappointments, and we have had to course-correct numerous times. Music provides a beacon for all of us. Dr. Hougham will share how music guided him throughout his life, and how you can find empowerment through your own love of music.
Who and What She Wants!
Julie Liston Johnson
We will explore how female empowerment is expressed through music by examining the work of female composers, strong female characters in musical theater and opera, and musical themes and stories that center around women's strength, independence, and voice.
DID I DO THAT?: Musings on Art, Aspiration, and Agency as a Multihyphenate Music Professional
Khyle Wooten
This session is an autobiographical reflection of a multidirectional career born out of curiosity, effort, failure, and resilience. Thematic considerations of transferrable learning, networking, goal setting, and psychological safety are central to the inspirational message of the presentation.
Reframing the Canon: Integrating Sephardic Art Song into Vocal Literature
Lori Şen
Rooted in centuries of migration and cultural exchange, Sephardic Art Song brings Ladino folk melodies into the realm of Western classical song. In this lecture, mezzo-soprano and scholar Dr. Lori Şen introduces the history, language, and stylistic features of this emerging repertoire, illustrating how composers transformed orally transmitted Ladino songs into expressive, nuanced art songs. Through musical examples and insights from her research, Dr. Şen highlights the repertoire’s distinctive sound world and its value for today’s singers and voice educators.
Songs My Father Taught Me: Folk Songs as a Liminal Space Between the Stage and Home
Jean Bernard Cerin
Explores folk music as a powerful site of memory, inheritance, and emotional truth. This masterclass invites singers to engage the expressive and affective potential of folk repertoire while considering the performative implications of bringing music rooted in home and heritage into a public, staged context.
Arts and Empowerment: Student Showcase
What Voices Owe
William Cheng
What debts show up in music we make — and how do we repay them?
Alexander Technique Explorations
Paula Murray Cole
Students will be introduced to the Alexander Technique by doing activities which engage its core principles.
Brazilian Portuguese Diction and Repertoire Workshop
Caroline Nardino & Ísis Jarnicki de Carvalho
In this workshop, Dr. Ísis Jarnicki de Carvalho and guest lecturer Dr. Caroline Nardino (US/Brazil) will discuss the application of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to the Brazilian Portuguese language. The workshop will also include a brief introduction to Brazilian art song composers, selected works, and issues with recording and disseminating this repertoire abroad.
Arts and Empowerment: Faculty Showcase
Expanding the Art Song Canon: Introducing Afrikaans Art Song Literature
Bronwen Forbay & Christian Bester
This presentation by the authors of Afrikaans Art Song Literature: Translation and Pronunciation Guide (Oxford University Press, 2025), introduces audiences to Afrikaans lyric diction and its vibrant art song repertoire.
Access, Advocacy, and Inclusivity in the Opera World for Disabled Artists
Ju Hyeon Han
Using my own journey as a basis, I will discuss what it is like to navigate the opera world as a visibly disabled artist from training to carving out a career path. I will also discuss the positive progress I have seen in the last ten years and what needs to happen to make the opera world truly inclusive for disabled artists and audience members.
Imposter Syndrome in the Performing Arts
Aaron Burgess
In this session, we will identify many of the root causes of imposter syndrome among performing artists and music educators and offer strategies for empowering the next generation of industry leaders to take a stand and find their voice. Participants are encouraged to participate in the discussion and share their own personal experiences.
Korean P'ansori Singing and the Environment
Ivanna Sang Een Yi
This combined lecture and workshop will introduce students to Korean p'ansori singing, a tradition recognized as a UNESCO world heritage. We will discuss how p'ansori singers today continue to cultivate their voices in the mountains and by bodies of water such as waterfalls.
Empowering the Private Studio Teacher
Marc Webster
Empowering the Private Studio Teacher brings teachers and aspiring teachers together to reflect on listening, readiness, and agency as everyday guides for studio work, and to notice how much they already know and how ready they may already be. The session shares portable resources, simple scaffolding, and permission to bring real teaching questions, brainstorm studio quandaries, and explore how teaching others can sharpen our understanding of our own voices and processes.
Blankets are familiar to us all, no matter our cultural background. We understand how their threads weave together warmth and protection from the cold. But blankets hold so much more. Traditionally, they have been created by matriarchs, whose artistry in quilting, weaving, crocheting, and knitting has preserved ancestral knowledge through generations. These Matriarchs stitched their dreams, care, and vision into every thread, crafting blankets for future generations to carry. Rebecca Hass (Nitaawe Giizhigok – Singing Sky Woman), a Georgian Bay Métis artist and Citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, carries the legacy of her Métis grandmother’s quilts. In The Song Blanket, Rebecca gives voice to an old woman searching for what has been forgotten — the traditional teachings and cultural wisdom whispered through the quilts.
Rebecca calls forward the matriarchs who travel with us, wrapping all in the transformative vibration of music. Joined by IC faculty and students Charis Demaris, Patrice Pastore, Alexei Aceto, Lusi Halaifonua, Sabina Jungkeit, Lucy Montgomery, and Michael Scamacca, audiences will journey through stories and songs — both new and old, as the old woman seeks to remember and reclaim. Through The Song Blanket, the journey with the old woman seeks to stitch us together once more, awakening the ancestral wisdom, love, and care of the matriarchs — those known and unknown — who continue to walk beside us today. She will give a workshop performance of this new piece here at IC before giving its world premiere in New York City’s Symphony Space as part of Sparks and Wiry Cries’s sparksLIVE festival later this month. Arrive early to view beautiful quilts made and displayed by the Tompkins County Quilters Guild in the lobby.
We gratefully acknowledge the Pro Musicis Foundation for their generous grant supporting this year’s Voice Intensive.