Kayla Gautereaux & Emily Siar on Evaluating the Art of Teaching Voice
Release date: Monday, July 13th, 2026
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode of the Berklee VoiceCast, host Charlie Christenson is joined by Emily Siar and Kayla Gautereaux, two members of the vocal pedagogy faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, for a deep dive into how graduate voice teachers are trained—and evaluated.
The conversation centers on a new rubric Emily and Kayla developed to assess the teaching skills of graduate voice students; one that moves beyond musical knowledge and genre fluency to name something even more elusive: what it actually looks like when a teacher listens diagnostically, responds in the moment, and helps a singer understand their own instrument more deeply.
Together, they walk through the rubric's major categories—from functional listening and motor learning to social-emotional awareness and self-reflection—and discuss the values and assumptions embedded in each one. Throughout, they address what it means to design an evaluation tool that is a compass rather than a checklist—and how that philosophy shapes the way they mentor the next generation of voice teachers.
CREDITS
Produced and hosted by Charlie Christenson
Music by Charlie Christenson
GUEST BIOS
Emily Siar is Assistant Professor of Voice and Associate Director of the Vocal Pedagogy Professional Workshop at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she teaches studio voice to musical theater and classical voice students as well as graduate and undergraduate courses in vocal pedagogy. Empowering emerging voice teachers and students with knowledge is her greatest passion.
Kayla Gautereaux is Assistant Professor of Voice and Vocal Pedagogy at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she leads the MM in Vocal Pedagogy and MFA in Musical Theater Vocal Pedagogy programs. A 2023 NATS Voice Pedagogy Award recipient, she integrates AI across research, teaching, and tool development with her graduate students and has authored and mentored over 22 singing voice research presentations at Voice Foundation, NATS, PAVA, and PEVoC.
Links from This Episode
The Voice Teaching Comprehensive Rubric: LINK
Emily Siar’s Website: https://www.emilysiar.com/
Kayla Gautereaux’s Website: https://www.kaylagautereaux.com/
BCB Master of Music in Vocal Pedagogy: https://bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/vocal-pedagogy/mm-vocal-pedagogy
Berklee College of Music: berklee.edu
Berklee Voice Department: college.berklee.edu/voice
Berklee Voice Instagram: instagram.com/berklee.voice/
Charlie Christenson: charliechristenson.com
Further Reading
The Musician’s Mind by Lynn Helding
Hearing Singing by Ian Howell
Cornelius Reid on Functional Listening
A Systematic Approach to Voice by Dr. Kari Ragan