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.)