The menopause transition is receiving more attention as of late – a good thing! But for singers, one piece of information is missing, and that is that the singing voice can be impacted by the hormonal shift during perimenopause or after. We will cover menopause basics, possible related voice changes, and how to manage them if they occur.
Optional: Joanne would love to hear from you ahead of the webinar what the “word on the street” is about voice and the menopause transition these days. You may have heard stories from other singers, and/or have had experiences with your own voices – positive or concerning – during this time.
Watch Joanne explain what we’re going to be talking about and what leading voice experts have to say about her! 👇🏼
A graduate of the University of Arizona, Joanne Bozeman has been a singing teacher for nearly 50 years. Her teachers include Richard Miller, Eugene T. Conley, Bruce Lunkley, and Teresa Seidl. In 1993, she joined the faculty of Lawrence University’s Conservatory of Music in Wisconsin, where she taught singing and a number of voice-related, diction and music education courses until her retirement in 2019. Her students have gone on to select graduate schools, young artist programs and singing careers. Others are music educators, university and community-based voice teachers, and speech-language pathologists. In addition to her career as a singing teacher, Joanne was an actively performing soprano, and she served voice trainer for the Lawrence Community Girl Choir program.
Inspired by her long-standing interest in voice health and the relationship of hormones with voice throughout the female lifespan, Joanne co-authored the book Singing Through Change: Women’s Voices in Midlife, Menopause, and Beyond, released in 2020. She has spoken on the subject of female voice and hormones for many organizations, including the International Congress of Voice Teachers (ICVT), the Association of Teachers of Singing (AOTOS), the British Voice Association, (BVA), the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), the Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA), the Physiology and Acoustics of Singing Conference (PAS), and numerous universities and voice collectives.
Her professional memberships include PAVA and NATS. Joanne serves as a course tutor and specialist with the Voice Care Centre in Great Britain, and is co-author of a chapter on female voice and hormones in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Voice Pedagogy. She also presents on her secondary topic of interest, hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome with Hypermobility and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), and how these frequently overlapping conditions may affect singers.
As a young mother, Joanne was a certified prenatal and childbirth educator, which formed the foundation of her lifelong passion for health advocacy for women, and of her interest in the effects of the hormonal landscape on female singing voice. Retired from academia and professional performance, Joanne continues to be engaged with the voice community as a teacher, presenter, and choral singer.