Presenters 2026 Winter Workshop | National Association of Teachers of Singing

Featured Presenters

Tom Burke
Ian Howell
Joan Lader
Melissa Malde
Mike Ruckles
Mary Saunders Barton
Leda Scearce
Emily Siar

Tom Burke

Presenting: Twang Farm: Phonemic Prompts for Vocal Versatility and Problem Solving

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Ian Howell

Presenting: Hearing Singing: A Guide to Functional Listening

Placeholder bio text (from ICVT 2025). Ian Howell, DMA is the founder and chief educator at the Embodied Music Lab. He has held research, voice pedagogy, and applied voice positions at the New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin College. He is a Grammy Award winning performer and recording artist, was awarded special recognition from AATS for his work to facilitate online teaching during the Pandemic, won the 2022 Van L. Lawrence award for his research into vocal fold oscillation patterns in high-pitched singing, and was inducted into the American Academy of Teachers of Singing in 2023. He now teaches voice and offers professional development to the voice teaching community. His first book, Advice for Young Musicians, was published in 2023.

Joan Lader

Presenting: Placeholder Text for Title

Melissa Malde

Presenting: Mapping the Movements of Singing

Mezzo-soprano Melissa Malde has performed throughout the United States as well as in Russia, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Germany. She holds degrees from Oberlin, Northwestern, Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, and the Munich Hochschule für Musik, where she studied under the auspices of a German Academic Exchange grant. She is a sponsoring teacher and the past president of the Association for Body Mapping Education (ABME). The book she co-authored, “What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body,” is now in its fourth edition. Malde is currently the associate dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts (PVA) at the University of Northern Colorado. While on the faculty at UNCO, she was selected the “Most Inspiring Woman Faculty Member” at UNCO and “Scholar of the Year” for the PVA. When she is not teaching, singing, or herding cats (faculty and feline), she enjoys reading, cycling, and gardening.

Mike Ruckles

Presenting: Hysterical for Hysteresis: Harnessing Its Transformative Potential in the Training of Crossover and Commercial Music Singers

(M.M., SVS, PAVA-RV) is a vocal technician and singing voice specialist based in NYC. He maintains one of the city’s premier studios for musical theatre and pop/rock singing and has taught in BFA programs at NYU and the University of Northern Colorado. His students comprise Tony, Grammy, and Oscar winners, with clients appearing on and off-Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the West End, and national tours. His methodology incorporates the work of Alexander, Feldenkrais, Lessac, Estill, Laban, Stemple, Body-Mapping (Conable), and Fitzmaurice, among others. As a singing voice specialist, he collaborates with some of NYC’s most distinguished laryngologists in the rehabilitation of injured voices. He serves as production vocal coach on several Broadway shows and made his own debut in 2013 as the associate music director/conductor for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Ruckles is a proud member of NATS, the Voice Foundation, NYSTA, and PAVA. In the summer of 2024, he was honored to serve as a master teacher, mentoring in the NATS Intern Program. Learn more at mikeruckles.com or follow @rucklesvoice on social media.

Mary Saunders Barton

Presenting: What’s in your Book? Using developmental repertoire to train versatile musical theatre singers

Mary Saunders Barton is a Penn State professor emeritus, currently residing in New York City where she maintains a private professional voice studio. She is also an adjunct professor in the musical theatre program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. While at Penn State, she launched an MFA in musical theatre voice pedagogy with colleague Norman Spivey to meet the growing demand for teachers who specialize in vernacular singing techniques. Current and former students have been seen on Broadway in Smash, Just in Time, Merrily We Roll Along, Shucked, Wicked, The Music Man,1776, Kinky Boots, Book of Mormon, Beautiful, and Moulin Rouge, among others, and in many tours and regional productions.

Saunders Barton has created two video tutorials on musical theatre singing. She is co-author of the book “Cross-Training in the Voice Studio: A Balancing Act” with Penn State colleague Norman Spivey.

In 2018, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah University. She is vice-chair of the American Academy of Teachers of Singing. Learn more at belcantocanbelto.com.

Leda Scearce

Presenting: Tools for Navigating a Path for Success: Rehabilitation to Habilitation

Leda Scearce is a singer, singing teacher, and speech-language pathologist. She provides voice evaluation and rehabilitation therapy to singers, actors, and other vocal performers with voice injuries at Duke Voice Care Center, where she is director of performing voice programs. She is clinical associate faculty and director of community engagement in the department of head and neck surgery and communication sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, where she leads community engagement activities for the entire department including outreach and education, community engaged research, and community service.

She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice performance from Indiana University, and a master’s degree in speech pathology from Boston University. Scearce is a frequent speaker at national and international voice conferences. Her performance experience includes appearances as leading soprano and soloist with opera companies, orchestras, and music festivals across the U.S., and she has taught voice at numerous colleges and universities. She is the author of “Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation: A Practical Approach to Vocal Health and Wellness” (Plural) and co-editor of “The Oxford Handbook of Voice Pedagogy,” to be released in 2026. She is a founding member of the Pan American Vocology Association and served as president from 2017-2019.

Emily Siar

Presenting: Speaking the Same Language: Aligning Voice Pedagogy Terminology

Placeholder bio (from Knoxville national conference 2024). Emily Siar has been hailed by Opera News as “charming and memorable.” The Boston-based soprano is making a name for herself as a sensitive and vibrant performer of opera, early music, art song, chamber music, contemporary music and cabaret. In recent seasons, Siar has been featured as an artist with Boston Baroque, the Henry Purcell Society of Boston, Emmanuel Music, Boston Opera Collaborative and Mass Opera. This season she makes make her debut with the Grammy® Award-winning Boston Early Music Festival. Alongside her career as a singer, Siar is a skilled and passionate voice pedagogue, serving on the voice and vocal pedagogy faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory (Doctor of Musical Arts, vocal performance and pedagogy), Eastman School of Music (Master of Music) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Kenan Music Scholar earning her Bachelor of Music degree. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Nick, and vocal yorkiepoo, Teddy. After advancing through multiple levels of competition, Siar was chosen as the 2024 NATSAA winner by a distinguished panel of finals adjudicators including internationally renowned pianist, conductor, and coach, Warren Jones; soprano, Susanna Phillips, who has performed in more than 10 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera; and talent representative, founder, and president of Stratagem Artists based in New York City, Justin Werner.