Soprano Theodora Ivanova Nestorova’s work is all about connection—connection with audiences, of course, but also connections between musicians, between disciplines, and between research and performance. As the winner of the 2022–2023 Research Alive Student Prize, she’ll be presenting her interdisciplinary research about vocal vibrato and sharing the many benefits of combining musical perspectives with scientific ones—plus, of course, performing some live musical examples.
Already an accomplished scholar, Theodora (current PhD) is part of the Interdisciplinary Studies & Applied Performance Sciences doctoral program at Schulich. This year, in addition to her research, she premiered an opera, joined the Global Leaders Institute for Arts Innovation, and started work on a new program with Montréal ENT Dre Françoise Chagnon! “Disseminating information and fostering change,” she says, “is why I do what I do.”
Theodora’s enthusiasm is infectious, whether she’s performing across North America and Europe, teaching and coaching voice, or just talking about her favourite music. In this conversation, Theodora shared some insights about how she builds connections through her work and what drives her in her many pursuits.
How does music move you?
Music moves me to discover. It’s the pursuit of discovery, I think, that has always driven my music-making, as well as now my research in music. Music is such a profound force that moves mind, body, spirit, and that’s what makes it extraordinary and so interesting to study!
What music never fails to transport you?
Broadly, music which speaks for itself never fails to transport me. As a singer, the connection of music to text is crucial, but interestingly enough, I actually most often listen to instrumental music. But instrumental music that sings! Perhaps it’s precisely because I’m always searching for that lyric-to-music relationship when I perform vocal pieces that I prefer to learn and listen to great composers who were inspired by the voice to write for various instruments. More specifically, I love J.S. Bach’s contrapuntal character and how instrumentally he wrote for the voice while also writing so vocally for instruments. I began my musical training as a pianist and I’m Eastern European, so I’m a sucker for Frédéric Chopin and most early Romantic Slavic composers, especially the women, who aren’t as well known, but I’m working to elevate their beautiful compositions through my artistic research!
How did your Research Alive project come about?
My Research Alive project came about from my fascination with the vocal-instrumental connection, and a feature common to both spheres in music, vibrato! I have always been so intrigued by vibrato as many instruments employ it to imitate the human singing voice, yet in singing, vocal vibrato is still shrouded in mystery. Vibrato is a key aspect in vocal-instrumental collaboration; I am one-half of Pizzicanto Soprano-Cello Duo with Alex Fowler and shaping through vibrato is critical to us. We love getting to demonstrate this as Music for Food Artist Fellows this year, and we will bring that to the stage during my Research Alive presentation. During my Fulbright Study/Research Grant year in Vienna, Austria and through my master’s training in vocal pedagogy at New England Conservatory in Boston, I began to look acoustically into vibrato variability. Now, in my Interdisciplinary Ph.D. at McGill, I am delving further and deeper into analyzing the vibrato phenomenon, as it interacts with the realms of voice biomechanics, vocal health & maintenance, functional technical efficiency, stylistic artistry, and musicianship!
What is currently propelling you in your research?
What propels me in my research of voice science, vocology, vocal pedagogy, and singing performance is gratitude at being involved in innovative opportunities such as McGill’s Performance Science Initiative and developing a new program in collaboration with Dr. Françoise Chagnon at AXiO Performing Arts Clinic. Cross-disciplinary initiatives like these are directly applicable to musicians and their lives and can have been proven to really make a difference in musical excellence, efficiency, health, and wellbeing. Another influential force for me as a multi-national citizen is representing McGill in the Global Leaders Institute for Arts Innovation this year, creating multi-cultural connections in the era of globalization and elevating lesser-known musical traditions and cultures. Beyond music, disseminating information and fostering change by teaching the next generation is why I do what I do. Knowledge really is power!
What is exciting to you about your field right now?
Translational, cross-disciplinary fields are exciting in general in the world right now, and that applies to music! Perhaps I’m biased, being an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. student and having eclectic interests myself, but I really do believe that multi-disciplinary work across several realms within and beyond music is the future. A great example of this happening right at Schulich is the growing Performance Science Area!
What about Schulich enables/allows for study and research such as yours?
The newly codified Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies as well as Applied Performance Sciences program at Schulich has quite literally allowed me to pursue everything I’ve always wanted within a degree! I am excited to perform Galatea in the world premiere of Burry's Il giudizio di Pigmalione, a new Opera McGill production, work with AXiO Performing Arts Clinic, sing with international musical organizations from Montréal to Boston to Europe, curate my own artistic & scientific projects, while also coaching Slavic Lyric Diction & Repertoire, teaching voice, and researching singing voice science. My wonderful supervisors, advisory team, individual professors, and mentors at Schulich & beyond inspire me to continue developing all of these varied activities into new areas. Being housed in such a world-class institution as is McGill University is what gives me the resources to collaborate cross-departmentally not only within the Music Research and Performance Departments and Music Technology, Education, and Voice Areas, for example, but also across Communication Sciences & Disorders, Otolaryngology, Biomechanical Engineering, Medicine, and Linguistics.
What should every student leave Schulich knowing?
Every student should leave Schulich knowing that they can craft their own musical career in the way that they want, with hard work, persistence, and purpose. And that vision starts in school, while at Schulich. I was lucky to be encouraged to chart my own path from the beginning of my undergraduate studies at Oberlin College & Conservatory. So now, I encourage each student to really familiarize themselves with all the fantastic resources that exist at McGill! Did you know Schulich is developing a Performance Simulator? Take advantage of it before your next audition or jury! Do you feel that you’re not getting the musical experiences you’d like? Don’t wait, practice well, do the work, and create your own opportunities! Everyone has a unique path in their life, artistry, and career; what is beautiful about music is the variety. Every musician is an individual, no one has the exact same background or life experiences as another. Each person is unique, and we should all celebrate that as colleagues. So, no matter which path a Schulich alum decides to pursue, the important thing is that music will always be a part of their lives and they get choose to how to move forward with it. And I love that; I think it’s thrilling!
What is something everyone should know about interdisciplinary research and performance?
Interdisciplinary research and performance is boundless! Music itself is such a complex field which involves so many extra-musical spheres such as psychology, philosophy, history, biology, medicine, mathematics, sociology, sports, dance, art, health & wellness, and so much more. Therefore, when performance and research of music makes the connections and reaches across the silos that are sometimes constructed to isolate fields from one another, that is interdisciplinary. There is so much more that is still out there to be done and studied and performed that hasn’t yet been explored, and that’s the exciting part of interdisciplinary work; we don’t even know what that is yet! So, I encourage every musician to pursue their interests in parallel and create those links between and across domains. As a dear mentor of mine said; forge, don’t follow!
Research Alive | Finding Consilience in The Vibrato Wars:
Hearing, Seeing, & Analyzing the Spectrum of Variability Across Genres
February 21, 2023 at 5:00 pm
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Discover the Research Alive series
Bulgarian-British-American soprano, researcher, and teacher Theodora Ivanova Nestorova is currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, holds a MM (Vocal Pedagogy & Music-in-Education Concentration) from New England Conservatory, and a BM (Voice Performance/Musicology) from Oberlin College & Conservatory. Theodora was a Fulbright Study/Research Grant Recipient to Vienna, Austria, studying MA Lied/Oratorio at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien and conducting voice science research.
Theodora won the Best Poster Award at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) 2022 Conference and was awarded the Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA)’s 2020 Best Student Presentation. As a scholar, she has presented at international conferences and as a guest panelist on the publicly streamed NATS Chats. Theodora’s work on both Vibrato Variability and Slavic Lyric Diction & Repertoire has been published in the Journal of Voice and PAVA’s InFormant.
The 2018-2019 first-place winner of the American Prize in Vocal Performance (Art Song), Theodora has recorded world premiere compositions with the Wladigeroff Brothers, Bulgarian National Radio, Indictus Project, and has performed with Fermata Chamber Soloists, Jordan Hall Liederabend Series, Wien Modern Festival, Bang on a Can, and Emmanuel Music’s The Bach Institute. Theodora is one-half of the experimental soprano-cello duo, Pizzicanto, invited as Music for Food’s 2022-23 Artist Fellows.
An active pedagogue and clinician, Theodora maintains a private voice and language coaching studio while serving as a course lecturer/instructor at Framingham State University. Theodora was nominated to represent McGill in the 2023 Global Leaders Program Executive Cohort.
For more, visit: theodoranestorova.com
