2025 Adjudicators

Canadian Zwischenfach, Jay Marchand Knight (they/them/iel) is a Frederick Lowy Fellow in the Deroche Laboratory for Hearing and Cognition at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

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Their research is concerned with voice timbre and gender perception, decolonizing opera, and the application of singing as part of larger voice, speech, and language (re)habilitation programs.

Jay holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Miami, a Master’s of opera performance from McGill University, and served as the Director of Children’s music at St. Patrick School and Church in Miami Beach from 2008-2016.

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Jay has taught voice at University of Miami and The Voice Lab, Inc., a Chicago-based school that works with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and they are currently on faculty at The Schulich School of Music at McGill University. A working singer, career highlights include the premiere of Stephen Edward’s Requiem for My Mother at Carnegie Hall, a pop-up Traviata at Casa Fendi with Florida Grand Opera, the title role in Handel’s Giulio Cesare with Opéra Queens, The Elder

Sister in Philon Nguyen’s recently released recording of The Cherry Orchard. Upcoming performances include the title role in Carmen with Jupiter Opera. As part of their interest in bringing opera and formal singing to broader audiences, Jay frequently engages with community-based companies and new music ensembles, such as RISE Opera and Lakeshore Light Opera in Montreal and Singing Out, a Toronto-based queer choir. Also active in composition and research-creation, their multimedia installation, Where Can We Sing?, on the subject of voice and identity, was awarded first prize for INDI Research Day in 2023 by

Concordia University.

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Jay has received research and creation grants from the ACTOR Project, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and Watershed and was the 2019 recipient of McGill’s award for Community Building.