-230x263.jpg)
Fiona Gillespie 
Voice
Education
M.M., University of North Texas
B.M., Westminster Choir College
Praised for her “brilliant sound” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “silver tone” (The Reading Eagle), soprano Fiona Gillespie Jackson enjoys performing a wide range of styles and musical genres, from Renaissance to Modern, folk to opera. She has appeared as a soloist in works such as Bach’s B minor Mass, and St. Matthew Passion, Handel’s Messiah and Dixit Dominus, Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass”, Mozart’s Requiem, and Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, and sings as both a soloist and chorister in ensembles such as Skylark Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, Kinnara Ensemble, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, The Crossing, The Reading Symphony Orchestra, The South Dakota Chorale, the Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity Lutheran, AMPERSAND, Inwood Consort, Berks Sinfonietta, The Denton Bach Society, the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, Vocal Arts Ensemble, and the Orchestra of New Spain. She especially enjoys focusing on the performance of small, one per-part chamber music. Recent and upcoming opera credits includes Miles in Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with OperaModo, the title role in Lully’s Armide, with Woodhouse Opera in the UK, and her music and stage directional debut of Hansel und Gretel at Lycoming College.
Fiona is the co-creator, with her husband Christopher Jackson, of Bricolage Project, a professional ensemble founded in 2017 based in eastern Pennsylvania. In 2017 Bricolage gave performances of David Lang’s the little match girl passion, which raised $1,500 for homeless shelters in Williamsport and Reading, PA. The group also lead workshops and public masterclasses on Baroque music at the Conservatory of Puerto Rico and worked with San Juan Children’s Choir. Fiona taught voice at Lycoming College from 2013 – 2017, where she also directed opera, co-taught a course on Baroque music and art which traveled to Europe, and helped lead choir tours to Washington D.C., Florida, and China, where she was a featured faculty soloist for performances at the Beijing National Library and the Shanghai Conservatory. During her time in Williamsport Fiona co-founded and managed the Lycoming Baroque Choir and Orchestra, a semi-professional ensemble which presented biannual concerts. In the summer of 2017 Fiona taught class voice for the Bel Canto Children's Choir's summer workshop.
In addition to classical music, Fiona has performed Celtic folk music for most of her life. She plays with the Borderland Band every summer for their residency at the historic Chalfonte Hotel in Cape May, NJ, and grew up playing and competing internationally on the Irish whistle. She spent severl summers playing recorder and whistle for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.
Fiona received her MM in Voice with an Early Music concentration from the University of North Texas, where she studied with Lynn Eustis and Richard Croft, and her BM in Voice Performance from Westminster Choir College, where she studied with Mark Moliterno. A native of Bethlehem, she is a also graduate of the Lehigh Valley Performing Arts High School.
