Berklee welcomes Hampton graduate to staff

As far as prestige goes, consider that alumni of Boston’s Berklee College of Music have rung up a total of 320 Grammy Awards.

When Caroline Collins was a senior at Hampton High School, she learned that Berklee had accepted her. But because of tuition considerations, she opted to attend Penn State, graduating this spring.

She promptly headed to Boston for a new job with the old stomping grounds of music legends from Quincy Jones and Branford Marsalis to Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer and Brad Whitford.

Collins, 22, is on the Berklee voice department staff as arts administrative assistant, which she describes as a catchall position in support of students and faculty members.

“I get to work with everyone in a little bit of a different way. Some days, I’ll be scheduling interviews to have new professors come in. Other days, I’ll be working with vocal coaches to come do master classes,” she said. “I’m kind of doing everything, so I get a really good perspective of the whole department.”

The “kind of doing everything” aspect fits right in with her background in performance and related activities, dating back to her days at Hampton High, where she reached beyond acting to co-direct a play called “The Giver” with fellow Class of 2018 member Tyler Anderson.

“We were people who wanted to take theater and just try to elevate it,” Collins said. “When we were approached with the opportunity to do it, we took it by the horns and just completely went with it.”

It apparently went well, as the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and University of Pittsburgh presented her with the 2018 Gene Kelly Award for Best Vocal Direction. And the experience paid off for her in college, when she approached Penn State Opera Theatre director Ted Christopher about another chance to take charge:

“It’s a big part of what I like to do, so I reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, I want to do this. I have experience in this.’ And he was gracious enough to hand a part of the show over to me.”

So she helped direct a production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” with Christopher’s blessing.

“He was very trusting of me. He let me choreograph and stage the entire first scene, unsupervised. He was like, ‘You’ve got it. You’ll be fine,’” she said. “He really showed me the inner workings of how to do an opera.”

She minored in business along with earning her bachelor’s degree in voice performance, further demonstrating an assortment of talents.

“Something they always tell you in the arts is that if you only do one thing, you’ll never make it. You need to be really versatile,” Collins said. “That’s why I wanted to take not only music, but also music business.”

Her ability to pivot came in particularly handy with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic and its effect on instruction.

“We had to switch to doing voice lessons completely virtually, over Zoom,” she said. “You would be on Zoom and you would be trying to work through these songs, and trying to work through all of these problems with your songs. And then Zoom would glitch out, and you’re just stuck in limbo and not sure what to do. So it was a really big learning experience, not only for us but also for the professors.”

In the meantime, Collins was gaining job experience outside of the performing field by working as community manager for Excellence in Analytics, a service-based company that works with law enforcement and other professionals to implement data-driven strategies.

Her job in Boston actually represents a return. While in high school, she was selected to attend Berklee’s Vocal Summit and Musical Theatre Intensive programs.

“So it always was in the back of my head that I love that school. I had rapport with them. I had experience in some of the buildings. I knew the campus pretty well,” she said, and with regard to the voice department interviewing process, “It really did help me stand out.”

Her overall résumé to this point couldn’t have hurt, either.

For a video of Caroline Collins’ junior-year Penn State voice recital, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9ApqCu_X4U.