A Toronto school is helping Trans and Queer people find their voices through gender-affirming singing lessons

For many people, the sound of their voice is something they rarely think twice about. But for others, the way they speak or sing can be closely tied to how they understand themselves, how others perceive them and whether they feel comfortable expressing their identity.

That’s where Toronto’s Express Voice Studio is hoping to make a difference. The music school offers gender-affirming voice lessons for people looking to explore their vocal range, experiment with different sounds and develop a relationship with their voice in a supportive environment.

Leading the work is Ocean Antin, who has spent approximately five years teaching at Express Voice Studio, helping students discover what is possible with their voices without feeling pressured to conform to particular gender expectations.

“My approach is really about helping people discover what’s possible with their voices, rather than teaching them to fit into particular scenarios,” Antin tells Queer & Now.

A philosophy born out of experience

For Antin, that philosophy is rooted in personal experience.

Raised in rural Alberta in the early 2000s, Antin says their early experiences with singing were shaped by rigid masculine expectations and what they describe as elements of conversion therapy. Those experiences influenced the way they approached music and performance, eventually leading them towards hypermasculine theatrical roles that did not necessarily reflect their identity. 

After moving away from theatre and beginning to work as a voice teacher during the pandemic, Antin began studying the voice more closely and reflecting on the structures they had learned throughout their own training. They also began to find a sense of community that challenged many of those earlier expectations.

“I started to think about voice beyond the rigid structures that I had learned,” Antin explained, adding that this shift eventually informed their approach to gender-affirming voice coaching, which they say is less about achieving a particular sound and more about giving people the tools and confidence to explore their own vocal identities.

And while these services are often associated with Transgender and Non-Binary communities, she emphasizes that everyone has a relationship with gender and can benefit from having more freedom in how they express themselves.

Some students, for example, may want to explore different parts of their vocal range, while others may feel they are not being heard or taken seriously in professional environments. Meanwhile, for Trans students who have experienced repeated misgendering, voice lessons can also offer practical tools to help them navigate how they are perceived.

But Antin is careful not to position the work as a process of replacing one set of expectations with another.

“Gender-affirming voice work should expand people’s possibilities, not replace one set of gender expectations with another,” they explain.

Gender-affirming voice lessons

The coach explained that lessons begin with a consultation to help get an understanding of what each student wants to achieve, how they feel they are perceived and what they would like to explore. From there, they work with students to develop practical techniques while creating an environment built on trust, safety and personal comfort.

That can include exploring different vocal ranges, experimenting with vocalization and considering how pitch and tone influence the way someone experiences their voice.

Importantly, students are not expected to explore sounds that make them uncomfortable or work towards a predetermined idea of what a masculine or feminine voice should sound like.

“Pitch is not gender. Tone is not gender,” Antin says, explaining that for them, the distinction is important because the relationship between someone’s internal sense of gender and the way they are perceived externally is not always straightforward.

Voice, she explains, can become part of a feedback loop in which people hear how others respond to them and gradually adjust their voices and bodies to manage those perceptions. Over time, those adjustments can become coping mechanisms, including masking aspects of themselves to meet other people’s expectations.

Creating spaces where people can explore their voices without those expectations, the singing teacher explains, can help foster a greater sense of authenticity.

“I feel like there are a lot of people out there who don’t have safe spaces to actually explore their voice beyond what gender necessarily means,” they say.

That freedom to experiment is also something they have experienced through their own connection to Toronto’s Queer community. Having lived and worked downtown near the city’s Gay Village for approximately three and a half years, Antin says being surrounded by the community’s creative expression has opened up new possibilities for them and the people they work with.

They point to the city’s underground nightclub scene as one example of how Queer communities create room for people to express themselves outside conventional expectations. 

Beyond private lessons, the local singing instructor is also working to make gender-affirming voice care more accessible through community programming. They recently received a grant through the Community One Foundation to develop programming that would bring gender-affirming voice care to the community free at the point of access. The initiative is still in development and is intended to take a community-based approach to Queer singing lessons.

They also operate a private practice called Out There Singing and collaborate with Come As You Are Co., a sexual wellness shop in Toronto.

For those interested in exploring their voice, Antin says the first step is reaching out to Express Voice Studio to learn more about available lessons.

Ultimately, their work is about making space for people to discover the many ways their voices can sound and feel, without having to measure themselves against someone else’s definition of gender.