{"id":215995,"date":"2025-03-28T14:56:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T18:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/?p=215995"},"modified":"2025-03-31T10:13:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T14:13:46","slug":"alumni-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/2025\/03\/28\/alumni-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Two recent graduates of the Montclair State University Woodwind Doubling master\u2019s program are making waves on stage\u2014both on Broadway and across the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tessa Dolce<\/strong>\u00a0has been busy performing in some of Broadway\u2019s biggest productions, currently substituting in<em>\u00a0The Lion King,\u00a0Death Becomes Her, <\/em>and\u00a0<em>Gypsy.<\/em> In addition to her work on Broadway, she has also performed at the renowned Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Alex Lemma\u00a0<\/strong>is currently on the road, playing an impressive array of woodwinds\u2014including bassoon, flute, clarinet, and saxophones\u2014in the first national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical\u00a0<em>Kimberly Akimbo.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Both Tessa and Alex studied under the guidance of\u00a0<strong>Keri Ann DiBari,\u00a0Harry Searing,\u00a0Wendy Stern,<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Chad Smith<\/strong>\u00a0during their time at Montclair State. They are shining examples of the success and versatility that the Woodwind Doubling master\u2019s program was designed to foster.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">The <strong>Montclair State Woodwind Doubling masters&#8217; program<\/strong>, created and coordinated by woodwind artist Chad Smith, is a specialized hands-on training program preparing students for careers in concert, Broadway, recording and woodwind teaching.\u00a0 During their 2 years, students have the opportunity to study 4 instruments with the specialists on each instrument.\u00a0 The program was implemented in 2019 and since then has attracted students from across the nation and abroad.\u00a0 Graduates of the program are now playing on Broadway, regional theatre, national tours and teaching woodwinds at prolific music schools in the tri-state area.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">For more information about this program contact Chad Smith,\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:smithchad@montclair.edu\"><span class=\"s2\">smithchad@montclair.edu<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tessa Dolce and Alex Lemma Take Center Stage in the Professional World<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":215996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cali-alumni-spotlight","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215995"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216013,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215995\/revisions\/216013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}