Author: Matt Edwards

Matt Edwards is one of the leading voice teachers for commercial and musical theatre styles in the United States. He is currently associate professor of voice and director of musical theatre at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University; artistic director of the Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute; secretary of the Musical Theatre Educator’s Alliance and past secretary of the Pan-American Vocology Association. Edwards’ vocal interests encompass many styles. He has performed numerous roles in plays, musicals and operas with companies including Tri-Cities Opera, Ash Lawn Opera Festival, New Jersey Opera, Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, Bay View Music Festival, the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic Pops, Hudson Valley Symphony, the Miami Valley Symphony, Cincinnati Opera Outreach, Lyric Opera Cleveland Outreach, Theatre Lab, KNOW Theatre, and many others. He has also received awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Dayton Opera Guild Competition, The National Association of Teachers of Singing, Southern-Tier Opportunity Coalition, the Voice Foundation and the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. Former and current students have performed on “American Idol,” Broadway, off-Broadway, national and international tours, national television, cruise ships, theme parks, bands touring throughout the world, and as members of the Ten Tenors, the Singing Sergeants, The Broadway Tenors, and the USO Show Troupe. He has written articles for the Journal of Singing, Journal of Voice, VoicePrints, American Music Teacher, The Voice, Southern Theatre, Vocology in Practice, and has been a vocal coach in residence for Voice Council magazine. He has contributed to books including “A Dictionary for the Modern Singer” by Dr. Matthew Hoch, “Vocal Athlete” by Dr. Wendy LeBorgne and Marci Rosenberg, The “Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation” by Leda Scearce,“Training Contemporary Commercial Singers” by Dr. Elizabeth Benson, “Get the Callback, 2nd edition” by Jonathan Flom, and the CCM, Sacred Music, Gospel, Folk Music, A Cappella, and Country editions of the “So You Want to Sing” book series. His book “So You Want to Sing Rock ‘N’ Roll?” is published by Rowman and Littlefield Publishing. It was called “an authoritative text on rock ‘n’ roll singing” by Classical Singer magazine, and is the best seller in the “So You Want to Sing” series. In high demand for his presentations and masterclasses on commercial and musical theatre voice, he has presented at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) National Conference, NATS Summer Workshop, Voice Foundation Annual Symposium Care for the Professional Voice, Acoustical Society of America, Southeastern Theatre Conference, Virginia Theatre Association, Musical Theatre Educators Association, National Center for Voice and Speech, Pan-American Vocology Association, and Carolina Voices; NATS chapters in Toronto, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, Arizona, Oregon, and Texas; universities including Penn State, Florida State, Brigham Young, Wright State, Georgia Southern, Otterbein, Illinois Wesleyan, Ohio Northern, Missouri State, Mary-Hardin Baylor, Texas Women’s, DeSales, Hardin Simmons, Snow College, Westminster Choir College, Lawrence Conservatory, Bårdar Academy (Oslo, Norway), University of Alabama, University of Portland, University of Toronto, University of Northern Colorado, and many others.

Celebrity Vocal Fold Problems: It’s not necessarily their technique that’s at fault

Meghan Trainor postpones Chicago show due to vocal cord hemorrhage - Chicago Tribune

Meghan Trainor is the most recent of several high profile performers who has had to cancel performances due to a vocal fold hemorrhage. Some voice teachers on social media were quick to blame her technique and suggest she needed “classical training” to prevent such a disaster in the future. More than likely, that is just NOT true. Most vocal fold injuries at the professional level are a result of insane performance demands, not poor technique.

Let us compare the demands of a classical singer to Meghan Trainor. Famed opera singer Jonas Kaufmann’s schedule consists of six performances in the month of July and seven in August, for a total of thirteen performances in four cities. That’s a pretty significant performance schedule for an opera singer. Trainor had fourteen dates in July, ten dates scheduled for August, and four for the first week of September for a total of twenty-eight performances in twenty-one cities. That is a significant difference!

When a performer such as Kaufmann gets sick, there is usually an understudy capable of stepping up and taking his place. When Trainor gets sick, it’s not so easy. If she cancels, there is NO ONE to take her place and there are A LOT of bills to pay and no ticket revenue to pay them. If a singer notices that they are losing their voice early in the afternoon on the day of a performance, it is already too late. The venue has been rented, advertising has been paid for, security staff have already been hired, stage crew members have already built the stage and hung the lights, and all of the support staff have already arrived and clocked-in. If the show is cancelled the artist still owes all of them their money AND the artist also has to provide refunds to those who bought tickets (Read a Washington Post article on the topic here).

Knowing all of this, performers often feel like they have no option but to go on with the show. No matter who you are, if you try to sing (or give a speech) through hoarseness, an upper-respiratory infection, or a cold, you are at risk for a vocal hemorrhage. That has NOTHING to do with technique. You could be the greatest vocal technician in the world and still get hurt. Meghan Trainor is not to blame, she is a vocal athlete and just as star quarterbacks sometimes get hurt, so do star singers. NO ONE should be shamed for getting a vocal injury. Does she need to see a laryngologist? Yes. Will she need to go through voice therapy? Yes. And there is nothing wrong with that. Should she have been under such extreme pressure to perform in the first place? Probably not. But we are not the producers or the investors, and neither we nor Meghan have much say over that. It’s just how the business works.

~Matt