Barbara Doscher

Each year, sixteen early career voice teachers and collaborative pianists gather for an intensive and hands-on 10-day summer forum called the NATS Intern Program.

Over the years, the program has been held at college campuses throughout the United States, and NATS has been able to assist with travel costs for each intern class through the generosity of others.

Now, stipends granted to participants in the NATS Intern Program to help cover travel expenses will become a permanent part of the program thanks to NATS donors who raised the fund to endowment level ($25,000 or more).

Through an effort championed by John Nix, professor of voice and vocal pedagogy at the University of Texas at San Antonio and former student of Doscher, NATS has granted $75 stipends to participants to help with expenses not covered by the program for the past five years. Funding for the stipends, however, depended on annual gifts solicited from former students and alumni of the Intern Program.

“I am delighted to see how Barbara’s former students and colleagues, as well as persons who never knew her personally but were impacted by her articles, books, or the teaching of those she mentored, came together to make this fund a permanent legacy in her honor,” Nix said. “Even more fitting, the fund benefits in perpetuity the young teachers of the NATS Intern Program, the program which Barbara regarded as the single best thing NATS did to further the teaching of singing.”

Doscher was a distinguished teacher of voice and voice pedagogy at the University of Colorado-Boulder from 1971-1996, author, and former master teacher for the NATS Intern Program.

She was widely respected as a pedagogical writer. Her two books, “The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice” and “From Studio to Stage: Repertoire for the Voice,” both published by Scarecrow Press, are used widely in voice pedagogy classes throughout the United States and Canada. Her published articles appeared in Journal of Singing, The NATS Journal, The Choral Journal, American Music Teacher, Journal of Research in Singing, and The Quarterly.

Professor Doscher’s students continue to teach at major universities across the country and sing professionally throughout Europe and the United States. Competitions her students won under her guidance include the Pavarotti competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and the Mozart Concours International de Chant. Many of her students were awarded apprenticeships with the Chicago, Santa Fe, Houston, Central City, Cincinnati, Tulsa, and Des Moines opera companies. She also appeared in a featured role at several national conventions of NATS and was a master teacher for the first two NATS Intern Programs in 1991 and 1992.

“She has touched and changed so many lives it’s hard to count them all, but I thank God every day she came into mine,” said Cynthia Lawrence-Calkins, Metropolitan Opera soprano and Professor of Voice, University of Kentucky.

NATS will continue to accept donations to the Barbara Doscher Endowment. As the fund grows the stipends will also increase.

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“My sincere thanks to all the past, present, and future donors to the fund for ‘paying it forward’ to the next generation of voice teachers,” Nix added. “I also thank NATS leaders like Vernon Yenne and Brian Horne with the NATS Foundation as well as Allen Henderson and Bob Bryan in the NATS office for all their help over the years.”