Summer Institute for Science-Informed Choral Singing and Conducting

The Summer Institute for Science-Informed Choral Singing and Conducting at Campus Saint-Jean of the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) this summer June 22-26, 2026. Both in-person and online modalities are offered. Registration is open, with early-bird registration rates until March 15th, 2026.

It is the ideal forum for learning about how the human voice functions and how to teach your choristers to sing in the most efficient, energized and artistic manner possible. This institute, guided by the following working definition of Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy, will resolve both myths and missed opportunities:

A hybrid type of singing voice pedagogy that unites science and art by researching current voice science, translating it, combining it with extant historic voice knowledge, and transmitting it to singers. Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy is informed by science, but not bound by it (from Lynn Helding, The Art of Vocology: Practicing Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy (Bloomsbury Publishing; forthcoming).

Institute Leaders Lynn Helding from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and Laurier Fagnan from the University of Alberta will share their knowledge accumulated over 60 years of combined study and exploration of voice pedagogy, voice science, choral conducting and cognition in order to empower choral conductors, choral singers, voice teachers and choral leaders  to understand and apply a full arsenal of current scientific knowledge relating to the physiology and acoustics of the human voice to draw out the vocal expressivity that can and should be just as prevalent in choral singing as it is in solo singing.