Collaborative pianist/vocal coach VICTORIA KIRSCH curates and performs innovative programs throughout Southern California, including concerts based on museum exhibitions and staged art song/poetry programs, including eleven concerts for USC’s campuswide Visions and Voices program. She co-created This, and My Heart with actor Linda Kelsey and soprano Anne Marie Ketchum after receiving a Chairman’s Grant from the NEA’s Dana Gioia, and the piece premiered at Grand Performances in downtown Los Angeles in 2009. Victoria was the onstage pianist for soprano Julia Migenes (Carmen in the award-winning opera film directed by Francesco Rosi), touring the world for many years with the celebrated singing actress. She has worked with national and regional opera companies, including LA Opera and Long Beach Opera, and she served as an official pianist for the Operalia Competition and the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions. Victoria has been a faculty vocal and opera coach at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music since Fall 2015, where she is now a Continuing Lecturer.  She has been the music director of OperaArts, a Coachella Valley-based performance organization, a faculty member of the Los Angeles-based Angels Vocal Art summer program, a teaching artist for LA Opera’s Community Programs Department, and she has served on the faculties of USC’s Thornton School of Music and SongFest. She was associated with the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara for many years, playing in the studio of renowned baritone and master teacher Martial Singher and serving as a member of the vocal faculty.