Music Director
Jamila A. Sockwell, soprano
Jamila A. Sockwell, a native of Brooklyn, NY, is a lyric soprano with a wide range of experience in the performing arts. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Langston Hughes Theater in Harlem, the Aprons Art Center at Henry Street Settlement and the DiCapo Theater, among many others. She was a member of SANKOFA; an upstate New York based traveling Afro-Brazilian dance and drum corps. In addition, she was a featured performer in the premieres of two new works, both written by Dr. Ira P. Schwartz. On television, she played the recurring role of Renell Carter on PM Productions soap opera, The Series.
Ms. Sockwell has performed Vi from Gershwin's Blue Monday and debuted with Robert Bass and the Collegiate Chorale as a Soprano Soloist in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy in C Minor. She has performed with New York Opera Productions in the following roles: Priraa Sorella/Nursing Sister (Suor Angelica), Fiordiligi (Cosi Fan Tutte), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni). Ms. Sockwell is also a 2001 and 2002 American Singer's Opera Project alumnus, where she performed the role of Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff. She has made her debut with Regina Opera, where she portrayed Countess Almaviva in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. Most recently Ms. Sockwell has made her debut with the North Jersey Philharmonic, as Mimi in Puccini's La Boheme. This season she will join Regina Opera as the Mother in their production of Hansel and Gretel.
Ms. Sockwell holds degrees from SUNY College at Brockport (Bachelor of Science - Political Science) and Long Island University (Masters of Science -Education/Counseling and Development). She has studied with such acclaimed teachers as Joyce McLean, Marshall Williamson (Juilliard School) and Jean Kaplan (HB Studios). Ms. Sockwell has also done master classes with Nancy Stokes-Milnes, director of the American Singer's Opera Project and Maestro Willie Waters, artistic director and conductor of Connecticut Opera. She has also studied with Wayne Sanders, the artistic director of Opera Ebony, and is proud to be a member of that esteemed company.