Meet the Team
Mandy Spivak-Perna, DMA
Soprano, Mandy Spivak, originally from Miami, Florida has been a successful teacher and performer for the past two decades. A frequent recitalist and soloist, she has been featured in multiple concert works in recent years. In the fall of 2026, Dr. Spivak will join the Bailey Choral Festival in northern Colorado as the soprano soloist in Verdi’s Requiem. She has also recently enjoyed multiple performances with Mississippi area arts organizations including Peppermint Pops with the Meridian Symphony Orchestra and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Mississippi Chorus in April of 2025. She was also the soprano soloist in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass under the baton of Simon Carrington for the Bailey Choral Festival, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle with Fairmont State University, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra, Handel’s Saul with the Miami Bach Society, Schubert’s Mass in C with Collegium Cantorei in Miami, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Moores Symphony Orchestra in Houston, Texas. Other concert appearances include solo work in Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, the Solemn Vespers by Mozart, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Missa Cubana by Vitier, and Bach’s Cantata 140.
In staged works, she portrayed Yum-Yum in Opera Mississippi’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and has enjoyed various cabaret performances with the company. Dr. Spivak was a featured artist at the John Duffy Composer’s Institute associated with the Virginia Arts Festival for seven seasons in Norfolk, VA. While there, she performed new stage works of rising composers such as Jake Runestad, Leanna Kirchhoff and Phillip Thompson. She sang the title role in Puccini’s Tosca with Amarillo Opera and Frost Opera Theatre. Other roles with Amarillo Opera include Love Simpson in Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree and Minnie in Wage of Sin for a KACV television production. Additionally, she portrayed Desdemona in the world premiere of The Bride of the Moor by Thomas Pasatieri with Opera Beaumont in Beaumont, TX. Her portrayal of Miss Lavish in the production of Robert Nelson’s A Room with a View was made available on the Newport Classics label on DVD. Other roles Dr. Spivak has performed include Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow, Adina in The Elixir of Love, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Arminda in La Finta Giardiniera, Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief and Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Dr. Spivak holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Vocal Performance from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami where she also received her Bachelor of Music degree. She received a Master of Music degree from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston. An active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Dr. Spivak has held teaching positions at Miami-Dade College, West Virginia Wesleyan College and Hinds Community College. She joined the voice faculty at the University of Northern Colorado in the fall of 2024 and resides in Erie, Colorado with her husband and two children who are all active participants and lovers of music and the arts.
Nicholas Perna, DMA
Dr. Nicholas Perna is Associate Professor and Director of Vocal Pedagogy at the University of Colorado Boulder. There, he directs the Berton Coffin Voice Lab and supervises graduate theses and dissertations in voice pedagogy. Perna was the 2025 Van L. Lawrence Fellow for research focusing on velopharyngeal opening in treble musical theater singers. He has publications in the Journal of Singing, the Journal of Voice, and VOICEPrints, and he authored a chapter in the Oxford Handbook on Voice Pedagogy. A Presser Music Foundation awardee, he has presented research on four continents at events such as the Voice Foundation’s Symposium, the International Congress of Voice Teachers, the NATS National Conference, the PAVA Symposium, and the Physiology and Acoustics of Singing (PAS). Dr. Perna’s research areas include voice acoustics, nasality and the singing voice, online voice teaching, and vocal cross-training. Perna is a Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA) Recognized Vocologist. For ten seasons, Dr. Perna has been the creator and co-host of the VocalFri Podcast (http://www.vocalfri.com), a vetted, cited, and trusted source for cutting-edge voice pedagogy and voice science information.
As an in-demand vocal cross-trainer, Perna’s students have appeared on stages throughout the world. Student successes include appearances on Broadway (Wicked, Waitress), regional theaters, and national and international tours (My Fair Lady, Shrek, The Sound of Music). His clients have won prestigious competitions, including the Lotte Lenya Foundation Grand Prize and the International Chinese Art Song Competition. Students have also been apprentice artists with prestigious summer festivals, including The Santa Fe Opera and Glimmerglass Opera. Additionally, he is a sought-after mentor of fellow voice teachers. Those students have earned tenure-track and adjunct positions at universities, served as NATS Interns (4), and run successful private studios.
Perna’s tenor voice has been hailed by the Houston Chronicle as “an impressive sound,” and the South Florida Sun Sentinel praised his “emotionally driven performance.” He appeared multiple seasons with Opera Mississippi and was a finalist for the American Prize for Men in Opera. Perna was twice selected as a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist singer. Equally adept on operatic and musical theater stages, roles to his credit include Don José in Carmen and Rodolfo in La Bohème, as well as Ravenal in Show Boat and Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden. Symphonic soloist appearances include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Lloyd Weber’s Requiem, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Perna holds graduate degrees from the University of Miami Frost School of Music and the University of Houston Moores School of Music. Previous faculty positions include West Virginia University, Mississippi College, and New World School of the Arts. During his tenure in Mississippi, Perna was a voice research associate at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He has also served on the faculty of notable continuing education programs such as the Westminster Voice Pedagogy Institute, Donald G. Miller’s Singing Voice Science Workshop, and the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop. Perna has been elected president-elect (2026-2028) of the National Association of Teachers of Singing after serving four years as vice president for outreach.