Piers Portfolio (Motel in Fiddler)
Piers grew up singing constantly. With three older siblings and many cousins in a musical family, there was always an audience and a throng of players to create original shows to put on for the family. Having a mother who is a voice and piano teacher certainly had its advantages for a budding performer, and Piers utilized those as much as possible. He began training with her and was soon doing children’s roles for local theatres, like Roo in Winnie the Pooh. He followed in his older siblings’ footsteps auditioning for commercials many days a week in NYC after school which resulted in a role for a comedy sketch on The Conan O’Brian Show.
By the time he reached high school in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Piers was doing about five shows a year through The New Player’s company, the school’s theatre program. His love for musical theatre began to take on a larger presence while he was simultaneously being exposed to classical music and training. During the summer of his Junior year of high school, he was accepted into The Governor’s School of the Arts at The College of New Jersey, a scholarship program where he began to seriously train classically. That experience confirmed his decision to train at a music conservatory in a classical program.
Piers attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA from where he holds a BA in vocal performance from the School of Music. While there he studied with Richard Cowan and performed in many operas under the baton of Dr. Robert Page. Upon graduation from CMU, he entered the Manhattan School of Music, where he holds a Master’s in Music (MM) in vocal performance, and studied with Trish McCaffery.
In 2011, Piers was invited to sing at Lyrique en Mer, an opera festival in the French Brittany islands founded by his late voice teacher, Richard Cowan. It was truly an awakening experience to sing chorus in La Boheme and L’Elisir D’Amore in a fifteenth century Citadel on the historic island of Belle Ile en Mer.
Believing that outreach performances are important to every community, Piers has performed with Discover Opera! in NYC as well as The Motor City Lyric in Detroit, Michigan. In 2014 Piers was able to work with composer Jeff Blumenkrantz in an original musical Moving Right Along: The world of Jeff Blumenkrantz through the Manhattan School of Music. Favorite classical roles include Le chat Noir (L'enfant et les sortilèges,) Papageno (Die zauberflöte,) and Bobby (Das Kleines Mahagonny.) Piers made his Compass Rose debut as Cocky in The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd and is excited to be returning as Motel in Fiddler on the roof. Piers is honored and grateful to be an artistic associate at the Compass Rose Theater.