Meet Shauna
I didn’t set out to build a studio - I just needed to find my way back to my voice.
I'm Shauna - a soprano, vocal educator, endurance athlete, and the founder of First Instrument Studio. I'm based in Los Angeles, and I've spent most of my life in devotion to two questions: what does the voice need in order to be free, and why does traditional training so rarely answer that?
My musical foundation is grounded in Black American music (gospel in the Baptist church, jazz and blues in the community) and was expanded with Western classical training at Temple University's Boyer College of Music & Dance. I've performed solo sacred works with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. I've worked in Anglican parishes as a staff singer for both the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Episcopal dioceses for fifteen years. In 2016, I was hired to tour with Golden Voices of Gospel - a German production that brought Black American vocalists to European audiences to perform Negro spirituals and gospel classics.
I've taught voice at the college level for years. I know what these institutions offer singers. I also know what they withhold.
When the pandemic ended all of my performance opportunities overnight, I turned to road cycling - not as a hobby, but as survival. Cycling and endurance sports have rebuilt me from the inside out. In March 2025, my home was burglarized and my bike was stolen. In the days that followed, something unexpected happened: I was awarded a scholarship by the David Lynch Foundation to begin practicing Transcendental Meditation twice daily — and everything shifted. Forty-one days later (on Good Friday), my bike was returned unharmed.
Meditation didn't just help me grieve the loss. It helped me see clearly (maybe for the first time) a few key truths: the voice cannot be free inside a body that isn't regulated, sacred music cannot be taught without context, and wellness is not a supplemental to vocal training.
Wellness is the foundation of vocal performance. That clarity became the Integrative Vocal Wellness™ , my proprietary framework and the foundation of First Instrument.
What began as personal survival became a methodology that encompassed all of my education and performance experiences. That methodology became how I help to transform singers and speakers into vocalists.
First Instrument is the studio I was searching for when I was still a student. I know what it feels like to train without being seen. I built First Instrument so no one else has to.
I created First Instrument for the singer who has been technically trained but emotionally abandoned by their training, for the educator who pours everything into their students and has forgotten to tend their own instrument, for the sacred musician who loves the music but carries complicated feelings about how it was handed down, and everyone in between and beyond.
My approach was built around a simple belief: you cannot separate the voice from the person carrying it. So I don't. Every dimension of your humanity (physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual) has a place here. Because I didn't build a methodology - I built a mirror that reflects the full range of who my students are, not just what they can produce. My students are complex humans called to serve the world through their voices; therefore, they deserve to be met as whole human beings.
I currently serve as voice faculty at Musicians Institute College of Contemporary Music in Hollywood, sit on the board of Wellbeing in Entertainment & Creative Arts, and run First Instrument as one of three mission-based brands through Creative Alchemy Alliance.
Wherever you are in your vocal journey, I'm glad you found your way here.
And if you have a dog, tell them Auntie Shauna says hi. 🐾