Artist Statement.

Singing, as I’m sure it does for all of us engage in it, gave me my first sense of identity and purpose. I began studying voice at 14, but I remember entering the Pre-College program at Juilliard at 16 as a kind of rebirth. Lorraine Nubar, the director and head voice teacher of the program, gave me—an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, a teenager who straddled multiple worlds yet belonged to none—my first experience of attuning to my emotional world. Vocal technique and musicianship, so inextricably linked to emotion and somatic experience, became a way to learn myself. It became the foundation for the therapeutic work I do now.

The power and intimacy of the teacher–student relationship is sacred, and I’ve experienced its impact from both sides. The voice is an unusually vulnerable instrument—it lives in the body, it responds to emotion, and it’s deeply tied to how we experience our own existence. I remember the feelings of control, tightness, and then release and exhilaration as I uncovered something new my voice could do. I remember feeling celebrated. And I also remember feeling shamed.

After graduating from The Juilliard School and Rice University, I worked as both a freelance singer and a voice professor. I knew from the beginning that I couldn’t take the role of teacher lightly. As I taught, I began to notice that singers would sometimes touch something deeper—grief, trauma, unlocked memory. A voice lesson would open emotional territory neither of us had the language to hold. And I realized I didn’t yet have the tools to meet them there. I knew I wanted to continue working with people in a close, relational way—but I didn’t want to limit that work to the voice. I wanted to hold the whole person. So I returned to graduate school and became a psychotherapist.

I continue to sing and teach because I cannot separate myself from my background as a musician. Music remains central to how I understand people, expression, and healing. And now, with a therapeutic lens, I have a new toolkit for helping others move through what their voice—literal or internal—is trying to say. I believe we do artists a disservice when we ask them to choose just one thing. Artistry is not in conflict with depth, or care, or science. I am still an artist, and I am also a therapist. Most importantly, just like you, I am human.

Read more about my therapeutic approach here.