Facebook Icon Flickr Icon Instagram Icon Linked In Icon Twitter Icon You Tube Icon Pinterest Icon Email Forward Icon Email Envelope Icon Language Selection Icon Institute for Vocal Advancement Logo Mark Institute for Vocal Advancement Coloured stripes in the IVA brand colours Padlock Icon

Meet the Founding Members: Spencer Welch

In the start of our series, meet the Founding Members, today we feature Spencer Welch, Director of Education and IVA Master Teacher.

What’s your musical background?

My parents pushed me onstage with a ukelele at age five, and bingo, I was hooked! By age 16, I was getting gigs playing keyboards and singing background vocals. Eventually I got out from behind the piano and starting singing lead…and I’ve even been known to bust a move occasionally, which is something if you know how little rhythm these feet have.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve toured North, South America and Europe, performing and recording with artists like Rhythm & News and Carolyn Arends. I’ve also done session vocal work on a lot of recordings, hired by producers and artists like the legendary Randy Bachman and Juno-winner Brian Doerksen.

Any other musical training aside from voice?

My mom forced me to take accordion lessons. No seriously, she did. Finally as a teenager, I moved on to studying classical, jazz and commercial piano. I also majored in composition in jazz studies in university.

Do you only teach voice lessons?

I love one-on-one lessons, but I also travel part of the year giving teacher training workshops and public master classes about vocal technique and application.

So far I’ve travelled to the US, the UK, Ireland, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia to lecture about voice and train teachers. I also teach over the internet using Skype. I think I have students on every continent now except Antarctica (which is fine because those penguins are such divas.)

Join our mailing list to stay up to date!

Get the latest news, events, and articles to your inbox.

Related Articles

Maggie Rogers was just a college student when she first met Pharrell Williams at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU.  They were asked to prepare a song and bring it to class to be critiqued. She had no…

Who doesn’t love a massage? It’s a nice thing to do for ourselves every once in a while, but have you ever thought about how it can be a real part of caring for the health of your voice?…

Your voice is a highly complex instrument requiring many different parts of your body to work together with precision. In order to give you an idea of how the voice works, it helps to simplify things a bit.…