Based in Toronto, Ontario in Canada, Diane Kolin is a French-born Canadian singer, a music educator, and a voice teacher. Her low voice brings her to explore various genres, from jazz to Baroque music and French chanson repertoire. She teaches voice to children and adults. She developed pedagogical tools and workshops for singers with disabilities to learn how to sing with a changing body or from a non-standing position. She collaborates with multiple artists groups, from choirs to orchestras. She is a professional member of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professional with Disabilities), and of the Recording Academy. She frequently performs in North America and Europe.
Diane is the founder of ArtsAbly, a company offering diverse activities related to accessibility and disability in the arts, including workshops, lectures, and free resources. Most cultural venues provide a level of accessibility for the audience, but rarely for the performers. As a result, there is a lack of public representation of artists with disabilities in mainstream platforms and on stage. In order to see artists with disabilities in the professional world, venues and cultural companies should be trained and sensitized to the problematic of accessibility beyond accesses for their audience. The weekly podcast “ArtsAbly in Conversation,” which can be found on all streaming platforms, highlights the work of artists, project leaders and scholars with disabilities. Diane is a certified Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification (RHFAC) professional, which allows her to assess accessibility of buildings and sites across Canada, with a focus on cultural venues and concert halls.
Diane is also a musicologist. She completed her MA and her PhD in musicology at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on professional musicians, composers, and music specialists with disabilities, in music history, disability studies and music education. Her diverse research interests include Critical Disability Studies, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Liszt. Between her duties as editor in chief of the Journal of the French Beethoven Society – Association Beethoven France et Francophonie, Diane frequently publishes articles on her research about disability and music in peer-reviewed journals and participates in conferences in Europe and North America. Her collaborations with disabled musicians in the professional musical world allow her to expose new ideas on making music more accessible to a broader audience.