Filipa M.B. Lã, soprano (BSci, MMus, PhD) is a singer, a singing teacher and a voice researcher with a background in Biology (5-year degree), a Master in Music and PhD in Performance Studies (singing), both awarded by University of Sheffield, U.K.
As a singer, she has worked with Carol Smith, Charles Hamilton, Richard Miller, Rudolf Pierney, Susan McCullok, Robin Bowman, Claire Vangeliste, Ingrid Tobioson, Annette Thompson, Laura Sarti and Håkan Hagegård. She has specialised in Song Recitals, performing English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian repertoire in Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, Croatia, England, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, receiving very good reviews (… “extremely talented young soprano singing Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death …”, Sheffield Telegraph).
She has 9 years experience in Higher Education Teaching, responsible for Teaching Singing, Singing Pedagogy, Voice Technique, Voice Technology, Music Psychology, Musician’s Medicine and Research Method courses.
She has combined teaching and performing singing with voice-related research focused on physiological and acoustical aspects of voice production. More specifically, she has published research on issues related to female singer’s health and wellbeing and to performance optimisation strategies, both applied to singing education, working conditions of professional voice users and cross-genre singing studies. Other research interests include strategies to prevent medical problems of the instrumentalist musician. Her work has granted her awards by The Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (2005), the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (2007), The Voice Foundation (2011), Santander’s Scientific Internationalisation Production (2013), Croatian Choral Directors Association and International Choral Institute award for Scientific Research in the field of Chorusology (2014) and Van Lawrence Award (2015) by the National Association of Teachers of Singing and The Voice Foundation, USA. She is an Associate Editor of Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, and a referee for ISI journals: Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, Journal of Voice and Folia Phoniatrica et Locopedica.
During the past recent years, she has been invited to deliver keynote lectures and practical workshops on voice science and technology applied to teaching singing and voice pedagogy in several countries (e.g. Spain, UK, Croatia, Sweden, Finland, Germany and USA). She has also carried out continuing education programmes for teachers of singing, closely collaborating with the European Voice Teachers Association (EVTA). Throughout the past years, she has established collaborative projects with KTH, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, London Institute of Education, UK, Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden, Germany, and Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University, USA.