Featured Presenters

In a survey to our New England Regional Members, the
​overwhelming request was to offer topics about Musical Theater,
Contemporary Commercial Music & Vocal Pedagogy.
We listened and have some  amazing featured speakers!

Jared Trudeau is a voice teacher based in New York City whose students can be seen in many Broadway, off-Broadway, National Tour, and regional theatre productions. Additionally, he is a full-time Assistant Professor of Voice at the Boston Conservatory where he works with both graduate and undergraduate students. 
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Trudeau is the second-ever graduate of Penn State's M.F.A. program in Voice Pedagogy for Musical Theater. Prior to receiving his M.F.A., he graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University with degrees in music and psychology, receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Department of Music as well as the Sal Soraci Prize for Excellence in Psychology. His honors thesis, “Belting Beauties and Soaring Sopranos: Voice Pedagogy to Address the Wide-Ranging Needs of Women in Musical Theatre,” received highest thesis honors. Through his research, he met Mary Saunders-Barton, who became his mentor in graduate school.
Due to his unique inter-disciplinary training and integration of practical studio skills with the most up-to-date voice science, Trudeau has rapidly become a sought-after pedagogue in the field. His process is based on a “Bel Canto/Can Belto” approach in which the voice is continually being cross-trained to maintain maximum flexibility and expressivity. In the studio he combines contemporary voice science with training in Lessac, Fitzmaurice, Feldenkrais, Skinner Releasing, Estill, Cicely Berry, functional anatomy, laryngeal manipulation, neuroscience, dance technique, and various acting methodologies to foster the best, most emotionally connected singing in his students. He has served on the voice faculty of Molloy College’s CAP21 Theatre Arts Program and is a visiting faculty member at Penn State. Each summer, he serves as the head of voice for S.T.A.T.E., Penn State’s summer high school musical theater training program.

Trudeau’s work as a researcher and guest clinician has brought him all over the United States to give master classes. In recent years, he has been on the faculty of the Bel Canto Can Belto workshops at Penn State as well as the Vocal Pedagogy Professional Workshop at the Boston Conservatory. He has also presented academic research at the Fall Voice, Pan-American Vocology Association, NATS, Musical Theatre Educators’ Alliance, and Voice Foundation conferences. Recently, he and his colleagues Amanda Flynn and Aaron Johnson were published in the Journal of Voice. 

Jessye DeSilva is a voice teacher and singer-songwriter who is passionate about storytelling in mediums such as Folk, Pop, Rock, Cabaret, and Musical Theatre. Through providing a safe emotional space in which to explore as well as fact-based knowledge of vocal function, Jessye helps students to find the most efficient ways to produce and maintain their own unique sounds. A "voice" is so much more than the sound produced by the vocal tract - it is also the set of unique experiences and perspectives which each artist brings to their craft.

As a member of the queer community, they are interested in exploring and dismantling binary concepts of gender in vocal music through the ways in which we talk about voice qualities and types as well as ways in which we approach repertoire. Jessye earned their Doctorate of Musical Arts in Voice Performance and Pedagogy at Temple University. Their Doctoral Monograph, titled A Survey of the Current State of Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) Vocal Pedagogy Training at the Graduate Level, focuses on the need for the inclusion of contemporary and musical theatre techniques in graduate level voice pedagogy programs.

They live in Boston, MA where they serve as Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre Voice at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.