What's New > Nicholas Perna receives 2025 Van L. Lawrence Fellowship
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Nicholas Perna
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The National Association of Teachers of Singing and The Voice Foundation are delighted to announce Nicholas Perna as the 2025 Van L. Lawrence Fellowship Award recipient. This prestigious honor includes a $2,000 award to support Perna’s research and the opportunity to attend the 54th Annual Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice, May 28-June 1, 2025, in Philadelphia
Perna is a NATS member in the Colorado/Wyoming Chapter of the West Central Region and an associate professor of voice and director of vocal pedagogy at the University of Colorado. He currently serves as the NATS Vice President for Outreach (2022-2026) on the NATS Board of Directors and has been the poster paper coordinator for NATS national conferences, including the most recent 2024 gathering in Knoxville, Tennessee. Perna also cohosts VocalFri with Sarah Welch Pigott. The weekly podcast is a member of NATSCast, the official podcast network of NATS.
Perna’s award will go toward his ongoing research centered on velopharyngeal opening (VPO) variability in collegiate treble singers.
“Investigating nasality, nasal airflow, and velopharyngeal opening (VPO) have been central to my research agenda my entire career,” Perna explained. “Our fellowship research seeks to determine whether collegiate treble singers vary VPO as pitch increases. We also want to discover how Western Classical (WC) or Musical Theater (MT) singers VPO differs as pitch increases. We will analyze if there is any correlative behavior in these singers’ contact quotient as pitch increases. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest treble musical theater singers may increase VPO as pitch increases and move into their ‘mixed voice.’ If that is true, this study could aid singers and voice teachers to better understand how to execute climactic higher pitches in an easier and healthier production, specifically in MT styles. I am grateful to have received assistance with research design from Dr. Joshua Glasner with Lions Voice Clinic, and thankful for the help of my two graduate research assistants Alice Del Simone and Benjamin South.
“On a personal note, receiving this honor in my first year at University of Colorado Boulder as the Director of Voice Pedagogy is particularly meaningful. Van Lawrence was one of the voice scientists with whom our program’s founder, Berton Coffin collaborated as he came to his own observations of the singing voice.”
Both the National Association of Teachers of Singing and The Voice Foundation extend their congratulations to Nicholas Perna for his achievements and look forward to findings from his VPO research.
About the Fellowship
The Van L. Lawrence Fellowship was created to honor Van L. Lawrence, M.D., for his outstanding contribution to voice, and particularly to recognize the importance of the interdisciplinary education he fostered among laryngologists and singing teachers. The Voice Foundation and the Foundation Heritage Fund of the NATS Endowment award it jointly. The Fellowship winner is provided with the opportunity to attend the annual Symposium on Care of the Professional Voice and visit laryngologists, speech pathologists, voice scientists, and research centers associated with The Voice Foundation during the fellowship year, with resulting research to be considered for expedited publication in the Journal of Voice or Journal of Singing. The Fellowship winners are members of the National Association of Teachers of Singing who are actively engaged in teaching, have demonstrated excellence in their profession as singing teachers, and have shown interest in and knowledge of voice science.
The Fellowship and $2,000 award are intended to provide opportunities for the Fellow to become more thoroughly acquainted with practices, techniques, technology and people involved in laryngology and voice science. It is hoped that the opportunities and contacts provided through the Fellowship experience will enhance the teacher’s ability to do meaningful interdisciplinary research and will encourage the teacher to apply appropriate voice science advances in the studio.
Past winners of the Van L. Lawrence Fellowship
About Nicholas Perna
Tenor Nicholas Perna’s voice has been hailed by the Houston Chronicle as “an impressive sound,” and the South Florida Sun Sentinel praised his “emotionally driven performance.” Perna has appeared multiple times in recent seasons with Opera Mississippi and was a recent finalist for the American Prize for Men in Opera. Perna was twice selected as a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist singer. Equally adept on operatic and musical theatre stages, roles to his credit include Don José in Carmen and Rodolfo in La Bohème, as well as Ravenal in Show Boat and Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden. Symphonic appearances include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
One of America’s most in-demand vocal cross-trainers, his students have appeared on various stages throughout the world. Student successes include appearances on Broadway (Wicked, Waitress) and regional theaters as well as national and international tours (My Fair Lady, Shrek, The Sound of Music). Perna’s clients have won prestigious competitions including the Lotte Lenya Foundation grand prize and the International Chinese Art Song Competition. His students have been apprentice artists with prestigious summer festivals including The Santa Fe Opera and Glimmerglass Opera. Additionally, he is honored to teach many fellow voice teachers. Those clients have earned tenure track positions at universities and are running successful private studios of classical and musical theater singers.
Perna is associate professor and director of vocal pedagogy at the University of Colorado Boulder. There he runs the Berton Coffin Voice Lab and supervises graduate theses and dissertations in voice pedagogy. He has publications in Journal of Singing, Journal of Voice, and VOICEPrints. A Presser Music Foundation awardee, he has presented research on four continents at events such as the Voice Foundation’s Symposium, the Internation Congress of Voice Teachers, NATS national conference, and Physiology and Acoustics of Singing (PAS). His research areas include voice acoustics, nasality and the singing voice, online voice teaching, and vocal cross training.
Perna is the creator and co-host of the VocalFri podcast. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Miami and the University of Houston. His previous faculty positions include Mississippi College and West Virginia University. Additionally, he has been a voice research associate at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He previously served on the faculty of notable continuing education programs such as Donald G. Miller’s Singing Voice Science Workshop and the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop. Perna is currently Vice President for Outreach for the National Association of Teachers of Singing (2022-2026).
Learn more at nicholasperna.com.