What is The Studio?
The Studio is the teaching base of Roland J. and Patricia Clarke Jalbert. The Studio was opened on July 7, 1977 to provide instruction in voice and piano at all levels of ability and preparation. Over the forty-three years of its existence, more than six hundred students have studied with us. More than ninety have progressed to advanced education in music and more than forty are music educators or performing musicians in their own right today. Many others continue with some form of musical expression in their lives to this day.
Roland J. Jalbert, Lyric Baritone
Instructor of Voice
Born and raised in Lewiston, Maine, Mr. Jalbert began vocal instruction as a small boy and has sung publicly since the age of seven. While a student at St. Francis College (now the University of New England) in Biddeford, he studied with the late Lawrence C. Davis, with whom, in 1972, he helped found the Lawrence Davis Chorale. In 1984, Mr. Jalbert received his Master of Music Degree in Vocal Pedagogy from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he studied voice with Susan Fisher Clickner and Ray deVoll, and voice pedagogy with Mark Pearson.
A classically trained singer, Mr. Jalbert was a member of the Portland Rossini Club from 1993 to 2010. He was a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, singing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Jalbert has also been a member of the Portland Opera Repertory Theatre Chorus and has sung small roles in PORT (now Opera Maine) productions of Madama Butterfly (1996) and Tosca (1997). A frequent performer of French Chansons and music of the American Broadway Stage, as well as Opera and Oratorio, Mr. Jalbert has given full-length concert recitals throughout New England, Quebec Province and the Maritimes. Mr. Jalbert has taught voice privately since the summer of 1977 and was a member of the Voice Faculty for the Chappell School of Music at River Tree Arts in Kennebunk from 1998 through 2002. He has also taught courses titled Singing Just for the Fun of It for USM’s Center for Continuing Education in Portland (2002-2007).
Patricia Clarke Jalbert, Piano
Instructor of Piano
A native of Montreal, Canada, Mrs. Jalbert has lived in the United States since 1956. She began study of the piano at the age of six and by the time she was a teenager, she had won three successive All-Canada Piano Competitions and been a soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. She is a graduate of the McGill Conservatory of Music and holds a Licentiate in Piano (LP) from that institution, having studied with Lorraine Gadbourey in Montreal and with Isidor Phillip in New York City.
Mrs. Jalbert has performed throughout Eastern Canada and New England as a recognized interpreter of Mozart, Chopin and Debussy. She has been a teacher of the piano since 1957, and she has accompanied her husband since their marriage in 1974. Mrs. Jalbert was a member of the Portland Rossini Club from 1993 through 2010. She has also taught courses titled I Always Wanted to Play the Piano for USM’s Center for Continuing Education in Portland (2002-2007).