Boston Conservatory Artists Turn Chairs on The Voice
Lexi Stephens performed Sienna Spiro’s “Die on This Hill,” which earned her the four-chair turn.
Griffin Nagel/NBC
Marcus Ladden Jr. performed "Cry Me a River," which brought coaches Queen Latifah and Kelly Clarkson to turn their chairs.
Griffin Nagel/NBC
Boston Conservatory at Berklee artistry was on full display in the early weeks of The Voice season 30, with recent graduate Lexi Stephens (BFA '25) and current student Marcus Ladden Jr. (BFA '30) dazzling coaches and audiences during blind auditions.
Stephens, who graduated this past May with a BFA in musical theater, performed Sienna Spiro’s “Die on This Hill,” which earned her the coveted four-chair turn.
Eager to recruit her, Adam Levine jumped in: “Honestly, Lexi, that was by far the best blind audition. I think you’re gonna probably win The Voice.” Kelly Clarkson also made a case to get Stephens on her team, expanding more on artistry and the direction she’d potentially take her mentee in. “It’s going to come down to song selection for you and timing. I want to show people another color of your voice,” she explained, adding “now the world knows that you are capable of doing a big ’ole badass song.”
Watch Lexi Stephens’s performance of "Die on This Hill":
Stephens, who ultimately chose Levine as her coach, has had a proclivity for so-called “badass songs” since her days at Boston Conservatory, excelling at both anthemic and sentimental ballads, as well as theatrical 11 o’clock numbers.
“Every single time she opened her mouth to sing in class, we all knew we were going to get a performance,” said Meagan Lewis-Michelson, who taught Stephens during her senior year. She fondly recalls Stephens’s ease and vocal dexterity while singing Sara Bareilles’s “She Used to Be Mine.” “She can ‘turn up’ the brightness of her voice to perfectly suit traditional musical theater but then conjure the grit and runs and attitude to deliver pop tunes like a star,” she explained.
Stephens herself credits her versatility to her training at Boston Conservatory, where she was encouraged to explore a range of genres beyond musical theater. “I think this training can help me a lot on The Voice because I’ll be navigating a competition where you get songs of all types thrown at you,” she said.
Beyond technical virtuosity, her remarkable storytelling abilities also stood out in the audition. “I’d say my acting classes at Boston Conservatory helped a ton as well because in these classes we dissected a lot of scripts, so now when I get song lyrics, I dissect them on a deeper level and it helps to connect to them emotionally,” said Stephens.
Stephens’s four-chair turn echoes the coaches’ reception to fellow Conservatory musical theater alum Bryson Battle’s (BFA '25) audition for The Voice in 2025, which eventually landed him in that season’s semi-finals.
Joining Stephens in this season’s blind auditions is first-year musical theater student Marcus Ladden Jr., who has been singing gospel choir and musical theater repertoire all his life in his hometown of Atlanta.
Delivering a visceral rendition of Michael Bublé’s version of “Cry Me a River,” Ladden made the song entirely his own, departing from Bublé’s crooner-like interpretation, which prompted both Queen Latifah and Kelly Clarkson to turn their chairs.
Watch Marcus Ladden Jr.’s performance of "Cry Me a River":
“You’re not just a great singer, you are an entertainer,” proclaimed Clarkson.
Latifah, pointing to her musical theater background, made her case. “I turned that chair because you stepped into my heart. I felt it immediately. And your artistry, I connect to that. If you love musical theater—I’ve done a couple musicals—I understand it,” she said.
Interpretative theatrical skills are essential to Ladden’s artistry, having transferred to Boston Conservatory this year for its rigorous training, industry connections, and access to Berklee College of Music’s resources for writing his own original music.
“I chose "Cry Me a River," specifically the Michael Bublé version, because of the dramatic, envious essence of the song—that's what I connected to most,” Ladden later reflected. “It was perfect for me to make a statement and let 100 percent of myself come out, especially as a musical theater student.”
In the end, Ladden ended up going with Queen Latifah as his coach. “I am so glad I turned around early enough to see all the amazing things he is able to do,” she said in the post-show interview.