Introducing the keynote speakers for the VASTA 2026 Conference: Changemakers 40! Keep an eye on this page, as we roll out the keynote speakers over the next few weeks!
Friday, October 16
Nina Eidsheim
The “Matterphor” of Singing & Listening
Singers and voice teachers are well-versed in the metaphors of our trade. “Inhale as if you are smelling a rose.” “Sing in the mask.” “Lighten up the line” In this keynote, I will address the naturalized metaphorical underpinnings—the metaphors we no longer recognize as metaphors— of music discourse, performance, and listening practices, as well as how these metaphors contribute to the further naturalization of both vocal practices and their practitioners.
We draw upon our embodied experience of the world—including the sensation of singing—to invent metaphors. But metaphors also contribute to framing our perception, and thus our embodied experience, of the world. This messy, circular, often ungovernable process lies at the heart of how we make sense of music (and everything else that surrounds us). At the same time, the sense we make of metaphors inevitably influences the actions we take to shape the material worlds we create, including our vocal apparatus and entire vocal body. In this way, all metaphors are ultimately better viewed as matterphor, a term coined by Lowell Duckert (2013), which reminds us to think of metaphors expansively and intermaterially, but never reductively. Voice is a fertile ground for considering metaphors’ multisensory dimensions: as we perceive and conceive of the voice, sensation is metaphorized and then naturalized through that metaphor’s use in pedagogy. And, given metaphor’s immense power in shaping the physical vocal apparatus, taking time to consider the metaphors we use as singers, teachers, audience members and critics may create space for new voices to emerge.
Sunday, October 18
Catherine Fitzmaurice & Saul Kotzubei
Talking Voice
In this session, Saul turns his curiosity toward Catherine — asking her what matters most in training the voice and in training those who teach voice.
Catherine Fitzmaurice is the founder of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and a lifelong seeker of the truth in every individual’s body. Fitzmaurice Voicework reaches beyond academic theory and seeks to connect in an intimate way with each of its practitioners. The living, breathing body of work has changed the lives of countless theatre artists because of its personal and adaptable application both in art and in life. Catherine lives in Los Angeles, but has lived and taught across six continents. Most recently, Catherine, together with Michael Morgan and Routledge, wrote and published Fitzmaurice Voicework: Embodying the Holistic Voice, a comprehensive guide to her work.
Since 1999, Saul Kotzubei has helped people explore and develop their voice, communication, and presence through a nuanced, personalized process. He came to this work through his own shyness and anxiety while speaking and performing. The gift of these challenges was that they led him on a wide-ranging search, one that eventually brought him to Fitzmaurice Voicework® — the work founded by his mother, Catherine Fitzmaurice — which he had managed to lovingly avoid for thirty years. Its emphasis on being present, relaxed, and vibrant remains the foundation of his coaching practice today. Saul is Director Emeritus of The Fitzmaurice Institute and holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from Columbia University. He is a Somatic Experiencing® practitioner and has also completed the three-year Castellino Foundation Training® program.