College Performing Arts
Audition Workshop

Join members and guests of the PAISOC community for the College Performing Arts Audition Workshop on Saturday, October 17. This mission of this workshop is to demystify the college application process for performing arts programs and to prepare students for successful college auditions. The expert panel will discuss audition preparedness, etiquette and expectations in theater, dance and music. This workshop will be an opportunity for students to learn more about the college admission process for their concentration and Q&A with current performing arts professionals. Students, parents, counselors, and instructors are all welcome to attend!

Date: Saturday, October 17, 2020

Time: 10am – 11:30am ET

Location: Virtual via Zoom

Fee: FREE! Registration is required

Panelists

Theater

Alexis Ingram

Alexis Ingram is a Rhode Island native who has worked in the theatre, film/tv, and commercial industry all over the US and abroad. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College she currently teaches at The University of Rhode Island and is a teaching artist at Trinity Repertory and The Gamm Theatre. Proudly represented by WSM Talent.

Musical Theater

Skyler Volpe

Skyler is an actor, singer, dancer, and musician based in New York City. Most recently she played Anne in the world premiere musical Sing Street at New York Theater Workshop, coming to Broadway when Broadway re-opens. She also sang and played guitar and keyboard on the Sing Street original cast album. Other credits include: The Hello Girls (World Premiere, Original Cast Album), Regional: West Side Story (Barrington Stage, Berkshire Outer Critic’s Circle Award), Passing Strange (Playhouse on Park), Tour: RENT (20th Anniversary Nat’l Tour).

Dance

Jessica T. Pearson

Jessica T. Pearson is an Associate Professor of Dance at Rhode Island College. Ms. Pearson is a dancer, educator and choreographer who danced with the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Gesel Mason and Concepts In Motion (Bermuda). An educator of the modern dance traditions has been invited to teach at Ballet West Summer Intensive, Brown University, Providence College, Urbanity Summer Intensive, University of Kentucky Lexington and has taught overseas.

Her choreography has been selected to perform at Boston Contemporary Dance Festival, Southern Vermont Dance Festival and Collective Thread (NY). Her choreography has been commissioned by Urbanity Next, Utah Regional Ballet, Rhode Island College, Salve Regina University, University of Kentucky Lexington, University of Utah and Providence College.  

Prior to Rhode Island College, she was a Post MFA Fellow at the University of Utah. She received her MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado Boulder where she studied dance pedagogy and choreography and BFA in Dance from Towson University in Towson, Maryland.

Music

Jordan Bak

“A star in the making,” (SeattlePi) Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak is an outstanding artist of passion,energy, and authenticity in the recital and chamber music arenas. A Sphinx MPower Artist Grant Recipient and atop prizewinner of the 2020 Sphinx Competition, Bak is also a winner and Audience Prize recipient of the 2019Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, the recipient of the 2019 Samuel Sanders Tel Aviv Museum Prizeand the 2019 John White Special Prize from the Tertis International Viola Competition. In addition to his growing solo career, Jordan Bak is a member of the celebrated New York Classical Players.

Highlights of the 2020-2021 season include debuts at The Kennedy Center, Merkin Concert Hall and The National Gallery, and performances with The Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts and the American Viola Society. He has been heard as a recitalist and chamber musician in the United States at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Bruno Walter Auditorium, and Jordan Hall, among others, and in Europe at the Verbier Festival, the Centre de Musique Hindemith, and the Helsinki Musiikkitalo. 

The third violist to earn the Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, Jordan Bak holds degrees from both The Juilliard School and New England Conservatory. In addition to his performing schedule, he has been invited to serve as Viola Artist Faculty for the Classical Music Institute of San Antonio, and as Guest Artist Speaker for the Children’s Orchestra Society in Long Island. Bak is on the faculty of Opportunity Music Project in New York City.

 Ashleigh Gordon

Described as a “charismatic and captivating performer,” Ashleigh Gordon has recorded with Switzerland’s Ensemble Proton and Germany’s Ensemble Modern; performed with Grammy-award winning BMOP and Grammy-nominated A Far Cry string ensemble; and appeared at the prestigious BBC Proms Festival with the Chineke! Orchestra. Comfortable on an international stage, Ashleigh has performed in the Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls (London), Konzerthaus Berlin and Oper Frankfurt (Germany), Gare du Nord and Dampfzentrale Bern (Switzerland), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Lee Hysan Concert Hall (Hong Kong), and throughout Sofia, Bulgaria as part of the multi-disciplinary 180 Degrees Festival.

Ashleigh is co-founder, Artistic/Executive Director and violist of Castle of our Skins, a Boston-based concert and educational series devoted to celebrating Black Artistry through music. In recognition of her work, she has presented at IDEAS UMass Boston Conference and 180 Degrees Festival in Bulgaria; has been featured in the International Musician and Improper Bostonian magazines as well as the Boston Globe; and was awarded the 2016 Charles Walton Diversity Advocate Award from the American Federation of Musicians. She is a 2015 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award recipient, a 2019 Brother Thomas Fellow, a nominee for the 2020 “Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities,” and named one of WBUR’s “ARTery 25”, twenty-five millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.

As an advocate of social change through education, Ashleigh served as viola instructor in the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Intensive Community Program, a rigorous string instrumental program that provides instruction to populations often underrepresented in classical music. Beyond instrumental instruction, she has presented lectures on citizen artistry and entrepreneurship, workshops for fellow educators on Caribbean folksongs, and guest lectured at Gettysburg College (PA), Keene State College (NH), Oberlin College Conservatory of Music (OH), and North Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts (NC). She has shared the stage as a guest panelist at the Sphinx Connect Conference and Chamber Music America Conference discussing topics of diversity in classical music, and is an Instructor of Teaching Artistry at the Longy School of Music at Bard College.

Ashleigh attended the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt, a year-long program in Germany focused on the study and performance of contemporary music. As the sole IEMA violist, she studied and performed with members of Ensemble Modern with highlight appearances at IRCAM (Paris), Royaumont Abbeye(France), and the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (Germany). Continuing her new music passion throughout her summers, Ashleigh has participated in numerous festivals in Germany, Austria, France, England and North America including the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme and 46 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany studying with the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Modern and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne among others. Along with receiving a Master of Contemporary Music degree from IEMA, Ashleigh received degrees in viola performance from the New England Conservatory and Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music. Her primary teachers include Carol Rodland and Louise Zeitlin with supplemental solo and chamber music studies with Stephen Drury, Eric Rosenblith and Mai Motobuchi of the Borromeo String Quartet. She can be heard on chamber music and orchestral recordings under the Mode, Siemens, BMOP/Sound, Navona and Musiques-Suisse record labels.

 

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