Episode 39 (Speech and Voice Disorders)

Joanna Cazden

For the April 2021 edition of the podcast, Paul discusses speech and voice disorders with Joanna Cazden, a speech pathologist specializing in voice rehabilitation for actors and singers, and an advocate for preventive vocal health education. She served for 18 years as the senior voice clinician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and her 2010 book, Everyday Voice Care: The Lifestyle Guide for Singers and Talkers, is a widely used text in performing arts programs in the United States and the United Kingdom.

She has also published in Journal of Voice, Voice and Speech Review, and numerous music magazine and guest blogs. As a lifelong singer and musician, with an MFA in theater arts, she brings to her clinical work a deep knowledge and lifelong affection for performing arts, and attributes her fascination with the voice to an experience at age 11 while auditioning for a children’s Shakespeare program. She has released six solo albums, performed with Pete Seeger and Amanda McBroom, and she maintains active music projects alongside her clinical and scholarly activities. Click here to hear some of her music.

She was the founder of the special IDEA collection, Speech and Voice Disorders, which we created so actors might have real-life sources to draw on when their character has such a disorder.

(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)