This session aims to give singing teachers tools to help prepare their singers for auditions and higher education studies within popular music genres. We sill explore what is expected of the modern HE student as well as practical tools to help the singing artists achieve their goals and develop their sound from an angle of evidence based pedagogy.

Kaya Herstad-Carney

Kaya Herstad-Carney has had a varied portfolio career and is a passionate singer, songwriter, performer and a harmony/vocal fanatic, vocal arranger and producer, festival director and event producer. She is a qualified Vocal Habilitation Professional and a self-confessed vocal geek and senior lecturer with a wide range of experiences and interests on and off the stage. She has a particular love for vocal habilitation and artist development in the Contemporary Commercial field of music including musical theatre and the extreme vocal styles in rock, pop, soul and dance.

Kaya runs two online BA degree courses for WaterBear College of Music as Senior Programme Manager and is the current Director of Education for the global vocal organisation Vocology in Practice (ViP) where she heads up the programming of education there and is also a singing teacher trainer through ViP and BAST (Be A Singing Teacher). During the pandemic, she was working part time in her native Norway as head of vocals at Bårdar Academy and as Principle Lecturer of Songwriter at DIME Online and most recently before then as a passionate artist developer and senior lecturer in performance, vocals and songwriting/creative artistry at the Academy of Contemporary Music, and have also written HE module content for RSL (Rockschool) and WaterBear. She has previously taught at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) and University of Chester.

Kaya is an award-winning singer/songwriter and regularly performs and writes her own material, either with “vaudeville grunge pop” outfit Science of the Lamps or for other projects; “yet another impressive outlet for her prodigious talent. She may be small but she has a big voice.” (Mighty Mojo) Solo or with her band she is particularly fond of playing festivals and has headlined many and supported numerous artists, including John Grant, Brett Anderson (Suede), Noah and the Whale, The Wombats, Lamb, The Farm and Marina & The Diamonds, as well as many performances with Sense of Sound choir including the BBC Nativity and with Seal, Bon Jovi at the Royal Variety Show and Ringo Starr at the Arena for Liverpool Capital of Culture Opening. Kaya’s original songs have been played on TV and radio and have been a part of three plays, two short films and two full feature film soundtracks for which she won a Silver Award for Best Original Soundtrack at the International Independent Film Awards in LA and was nominated for six other awards.

A versatile, creative and hard-working individual, Kaya has a genuine enthusiasm, not just for music but working with people and the arts. She is a positive, enthusiastic and energetic music industry professional with a student and person-centred approach. For more info about Kaya on her website: https://www.kayamusic.com