Senior Artist Development Manager | OPERA America

Pamela Jones is the Senior Artist Development Manager at OPERA America, where she facilitates discussions among artists, trainers, and artist managers about opera to educate the field, provide resources, and create greater access and representation for all artists.

She works with the Teaching Artist and the Performer Development networks, the IDEA Opera Residents, the HBCU Opera and Musical Theater Collective, and the Mentorship Program for Opera Leaders of Color. She helps to plan and administer programs, such as the September 2024 webinar with the Soloist Collective of Emerging Artists regarding removing barriers of access for auditions at North American opera companies and the 2023-24 joint discussion series with the National Opera Association “Voice and Opera Curricula: Training for Sustainable Careers”. She also helped plan and was a panelist on the 2023 webinar, “Race in Opera: Blackface, Yellowface and Casting”. In addition, she organized and ran OPERA America’s first Teaching Artist Forum in September 2024, and she has helped design and facilitate discussions on gender inclusivity at conferences and via webinars. Ms. Jones plans and facilitates professional development workshops for BIPOC artists, Career Expansion for Artists, Feedback Auditions, regional auditions at OPERA America conferences, and Career Blueprints for Singers, which she revamped to remove barriers of access and to empower artists to advocate for themselves. She has been an adjudicator for various vocal competitions, including the National Opera Association’s Carolyn Bailey Argento Vocal Competition.

She first delved into activism while on an operatic engagement in Europe when a contract needed to be re-negotiated. Later she fulfilled a term as an AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists) union grievance person while singing with New York City Opera and fulfilled a term on the leadership council for the Black Opera Alliance, serving on the research committee.

Ms. Jones has sung with opera companies and orchestras in North America, Europe, and Asia. A two-time winner of the National Opera Association’s Legacy Award, she earned her master’s degree in voice performance from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and is an active member of the David I. Martin Music Guild, a NYC chapter of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM). She and Jayme Alilaw recently designed and co-facilitated “OPERA America presents: Blacks in Opera – our Legacy, the present and the Future” at the annual NANM convention in Atlanta.