Edrie Means Weekly

The National Association of Teachers of Singing, the NATS Foundation and the Voice Foundation have named Edrie Means Weekly of Fairfax, Virginia, as the 2021 Van Lawrence Fellowship Award winner.

Weekly is professional singer, private teacher, and adjunct associate professor of voice and voice pedagogy at Shenandoah University and Conservatory of Music. She is co-founder of the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute, and she serves on the advisory boards of the Voice Foundation, the National Musical Theatre Competitions (NATS), and the Pan American Vocology Association.

As the award winner, Weekly proposes researching the impact of COVID-19 on breath stamina and compensatory tensions in singers. Her proposed study topic would be, “The Parameters of Breath Stamina and Muscle Tension in Elite Musical Theatre Singers Post COVID-19, and Whether Those Parameters Change with Treatment Protocol.”

Weekly has been teaching at the graduate level at Shenandoah University since 1995. Her current and former students can be heard on Grammy Recordings, movies, Broadway, off-Broadway, national and international tours, regional theatre, TV (including “The Voice,” “American Idol,” and “Kidz Star USA”). Weekly have been an active member of NATS since 1996 and has served on the Virginia NATS Board for several years. In the summer of 2013, she was named a Master Teacher for the NATS Intern Program.

In addition to her advisory committee roles for NATS, Weekly has presented lectures, master classes, concerts and sessions for the NATS National Conventions, Regional and State NATS Chapters. She is a contributing author for Training Contemporary Commercial Singers, The Vocal Athlete: Application and Teaching the Hybrid Singer 2nd edition, The Voice Teacher’s Cookbook: Creative Recipes for Teachers of Singing, and Teaching Singing in the 21st Century.

Information about and past winners of the Van L. Lawrence Award

About the fellowship

The Van L. Lawrence Fellowship was created to honor Van L. Lawrence, M.D. for his outstanding contribution to voice, and particularly to recognize the importance of the interdisciplinary education he fostered among laryngologists and singing teachers. The Voice Foundation and National Association of Teachers of Singing Foundation award it jointly. The Fellowship winner will be provided with the opportunity to attend the annual Symposium on Care of the Professional Voice and visit laryngologists, speech pathologists, voice scientists, and research centers associated with The Voice Foundation during the fellowship year, with resulting research to be considered for expedited publication in the Journal of Voice or Journal of Singing. The Fellowship winners are members of the National Association of Teachers of Singing who are actively engaged in teaching, have demonstrated excellence in their profession as singing teachers, and have shown interest in and knowledge of voice science. The Fellowship and $2,000 award are intended to provide opportunities for the Fellow to become more thoroughly acquainted with practices, techniques, technology and people involved in laryngology and voice science. It is hoped that the opportunities and contacts provided through the Fellowship experience will enhance the teacher’s ability to do meaningful interdisciplinary research, and will encourage the teacher to apply appropriate voice science advances in the studio.